By Jeff Barr
jbarr@kalamazoogazette.com
388-8581

KALAMAZOO -- When it came time to offer gifts to international visitors in town for the 12th annual Russian Festival earlier this month, Garrylee McCormick invoked the memory of Abraham Lincoln and gave his new Russian friends something to remember.

Something beautiful, something historical, something uniquely Kalamazoo.

McCormick, a longtime community activist and member of the Russian Festival organizational committee, opened the fest by presenting a delegation of Russian visitors with three small, finger-hinged boxes made from the wood of a perished burr oak tree under which Lincoln gave a speech in Kalamazoo in 1856.

"Kalamazoo has been a sister city to Pushkin, Russia, for 12 years, and there have been many gift exchanges so it was a challenge to come up with something that really would stand out," McCormick said. "I knew the wood from that tree was being stored by the city somewhere since it died two years ago, and I also know that Lincoln is revered in Russia.

"Somehow the idea just clicked."

Lincoln was campaigning for Republican presidential candidate John Fremont 151 years ago when he spoke under the burr oak in downtown Kalamazoo's Bronson Park. It was Lincoln's first and last visit to Michigan.

After the approximately 250-year-old tree died of root rot in 2005, it was removed from the park and a few planks of lumber were cut and stored at Kustom Kuts sawmill in Vicksburg.

At the time, Kalamazoo Forestry Supervisor Todd Pryor didn't know what the use for the wood might be, but he knew of its history and he made sure some lumber was set aside.

McCormick, a past member of the city's Parks and Recreation advisory board and its Environmental Concerns Committee, remembered that the wood was available and contacted Pryor to secure it to create his gift. Then McCormick -- a local artist who owns a hair salon in the Park Trades Center in Kalamazoo -- enlisted his friend Dennis Dahl, owner of Homestead Furniture, a custom cabinetry business stationed in the lower level of the Trades Center, to make the boxes.

At first glance, the five, small, finger-hinged, stained and lacquered boxes -- measuring 8-by-5 1/2-by-5 inches with a piece of burgundy felt inside -- seem simple enough, but a closer look reveals their craftsmanship.

"The stain brings out the rings, the grain and the quarter-sawn cuts in the wood, which are just beautiful and unique to this tree," Dahl said.

During the Russian Festival gala held Nov. 9 at Dalton Recital Hall on the Western Michigan University campus, two of the boxes were given to Evgeny Pokotilov and Yuri Zorin, visitors from Cherepovets, Russia; and one was given to Natalia Batova, cultural attache of the Embassy of the Russian Federation.

"They were thrilled," said McCormick, who is a member of the Kalamazoo-Pushkin Sister City committee and has visited Russia four times, where he said every child has studied Lincoln. "He is revered throughout Europe. The people equate him with the creation of democracy. When I presented the gifts and told them of the history of the wood, they couldn't believe it.

"It was a great moment."

There are two more boxes. One will be shipped to a government office in Cherepovets and another will be offered as a gift exchange in Pushkin in July.

And what of the extra lumber from the historic tree? There are a few planks temporarily stored in the back room at Homestead Furniture.

"I've got them here until Garry tells me what to do with them," Dahl said. "If I know him, he'll come up with something creative."