![\"La](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/PPN-L-lagrange-park-arbor-day-0805-01.jpg\")
La Grange Park officials honored Community Park District of La Grange Park Commissioner Alexandria Zuck by planting a ginkgo tree in her honor Friday, July 31 during the La Grange Park Arbor Day celebration. (Hank Beckman\/Pioneer Press)<\/p>\nWhile many areas recognize Arbor Day in spring, La Grange Park\u2019s celebration of trees takes place in midsummer, and officials used this year\u2019s event to add a future contributor to the village\u2019s leafy canopy.<\/p>\n
La Grange Park\u2019s 2026 Arbor Day Celebration on Friday, July 31, commemorated the environmental impact of a Community Park District of La Grange Park commissioner with a tree planted in honor of Alexandria Zuck.<\/p>\n
About 60 village officials and residents turned out to watch as the ginkgo tree was planted on Oak Avenue between Forest and Sherwood roads. A plaque honoring Zuck was installed next to the tree.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want to say thank you everyone for being here,\u201d Zuck said in accepting the honor. \u201cIt means so much and I wouldn\u2019t be able to do the work I do without every single person here that brought us to this moment. Thank you for putting your trust in me to help make our community better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuck is married with three children and the audience included her mother, father, stepmother and stepfather.<\/p>\n
The Arbor Day Foundation\u2019s official national celebration is the last Friday in April, but various states and municipalities often mark the day in different months.<\/p>\n
La Grange Park has been recognized by the Foundation as a \u201cTree City\u201d for 34 years. In order to be given that honor, a town must meet four criteria \u2014 have a tree board or department, have a tree care ordinance, devote a portion of its budget to urban forestry, and celebrate Arbor Day.<\/p>\n
La Grange Park began its tradition of honoring a citizen on Arbor Day in 2004. Every year, the village seeks nominations from the community, and village staff then votes on which nominee to honor.<\/p>\n
La Grange Park officials honored Community Park District of La Grange Park Commissioner Alexandria Zuck by planting a ginkgo tree in her honor Friday, July 31 during the La Grange Park Arbor Day celebration. (Hank Beckman\/Pioneer Press)<\/p>\n
Zuck was nominated for this year\u2019s award by area resident David Bryant because \u201cshe was involved in making this community a much better place to live and to learn.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very, very lucky to have Alex with us,\u201d Bryant said.<\/p>\n
Zuck was thrilled about the honor.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is something,\u201d she said before the ceremony, pointing to her childhood home across the street from the ceremony site. \u201cI grew up right there \u2026 and we moved just a couple doors down the block. We moved here in \u201997.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuck grew up in La Grange Park and graduated from Lyons Township High before heading off to St. Louis University, where she earned a doctorate in physical therapy.<\/p>\n
But she recently transitioned out of physical therapy and is working in the nonprofit sector assisting victims of domestic violence.<\/p>\n
Zuck is serving her second term as commissioner, but her commitment to environmental issues doesn\u2019t end there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI work with the Park District and I\u2019m also the board president of Go Green Greater La Grange, so through that I\u2019ve been able to bring a lot of programming here to our community and it\u2019s exciting to see something that\u2019s going to take root so that even years from now when I\u2019m no longer here hopefully the message is still here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zuck lauded the all-volunteer staff of Go Green Greater La Grange, saying \u201call of the programs that we have are because people care deeply about them.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said a goal of the group is to build a year-round recycling center in the region.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomewhere closer so people don\u2019t have to be driving to South Holland, Naperville or Aurora. We would like for there to be somewhere to help reduce the burden of these hard to recycle materials.\u201d<\/p>\n
La Grange Park Public Works director Rick Radde moderated the Arbor Day event and Public Works supervisor John Jandak narrated a brief history of Arbor Day.<\/p>\n
Arbor Day originated in 1872 and was the brainchild of Newspaper Editor J. Sterling Morton, of Nebraska, whose son Joy Morton founded the Morton Arboretum in 1922 in Lisle.<\/p>\n
In order to promote awareness of the importance of trees, J. Sterling Morton proposed a tree-planting holiday to be named Arbor Day, which resulted in about 1 million trees being planted in the Nebraska Territory in 1872.<\/p>\n
The idea quickly caught on and spread to the rest of the country, with all 50 states now holding an official celebration.<\/p>\n
Hank Beckman is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While many areas recognize Arbor Day in spring, La Grange Park\u2019s celebration of trees takes place in midsummer,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":979864,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,232039,5404,232040,17073,1108,14685,746,14686,14689,1818,2961,14692,14693,728,224,5337,50,14703,14710,14717],"class_list":["post-979863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-clarendon-hills","tag-cook-county","tag-darien","tag-dupage-county","tag-elmhurst","tag-elmwood-park","tag-environment","tag-franklin-park","tag-hinsdale","tag-illinois","tag-la","tag-la-grange","tag-la-grange-park","tag-local-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-news","tag-oak-park","tag-river-forest","tag-western-springs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117036748052628920","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=979863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/979863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/979864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=979863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=979863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=979863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}