Tree Memorial for Judge Burton Kolman

The Tree Memorial for Judge Burton Kolman

The memorial was created in 1969 by Anita Kolman in memory of her husband, the first blind judge in the Chicago Circuit Court. New Glenview Road was a barren, weed-choked stretch of highway, neglected by state officials. She planted more than 1500 flowering crab, honey locust, lilac and evergreen trees along the route with the help of hundreds of friends and neighbors. Then, over the course of several years, she watered and tended to the trees until they grew to maturity. The trees, which have turned New Glenview Road into one of the North Shore’s most beautiful thoroughfares, burst into bloom every spring in a spectacular profusion of color.

Anita Kolman passed away on March 5, 2014.

In 1970, Anita Kolman explained her efforts to a Chicago newspaper reporter: "The gist of this story is that one can do a thing like this without a quarter of a million dollars, which contractors tell me this Tree Memorial is going to be worth in five years with our maintenance. I had my youth and I poured all my love into it. I had no jewels to put into this little Taj Mahal. It is a continuous challenge, an urge in me to make this a place of beauty."

Burton Kolman

Burton Kolman was blinded at age 16 in a sandlot baseball accident. But blindness transformed his life and brought out the best in him.

He graduated first in his class at DePaul University Law School, started a successful law practice and became the first blind judge in the Chicago Circuit Court at age 32.

At a time when blind people struggled at the periphery of society, he took the train to the Chicago Loop every day with his Seeing Eye dog, maneuvered through the city with confidence, and became a model for blind people across the country.

He was also active in the civil rights movement through the Chicago Commission on Human Relations. At 6'5", he was a visible presence in the Wilmette community, riding on a tandem bicycle with his three children. At age 34, he had a heart attack and died while on the bench.

Anita Kolman

Anita Kolman believed that God was always by her side, helping her every step in the way.

She was born in the Port of Aden as her family was making a journey to Palestine. Her father was a rabbi who became a teacher in an agricultural school for European immigrants. She grew up with the best education Palestine had to offer, graduated from a religious gymnasia, and decided to become a juvenile judge in order to combat the crime in her new country.

At a time when going to university in Lebanon was considered travelling to the end of the earth, she decided to go to London, where got her undergraduate degree. Later, she travelled even further, to Chicago and DePaul University Law School.

There she fell in love with Burton Kolman, a brilliant blind law student. She married him six weeks after they met and they had three children.

It wasn't easy being the wife of a blind man, but she helped him become, at age 32, Chicago's first blind judge. Then, suddenly, he died of a heart attack at age 34.

Her grief was bottomless. But somehow, in the depth of her despair, she had a new idea: She would work through her grief by planting a tree memorial to her husband on New Glenview Road, a barren weed-choked stretch of highway that cut through Wilmette. She planted hundreds of trees -- flowering crabs and honey locusts that burst into bloom in every spring -- turning the highway into a living watercolor.

She believed that God would help her build the tree memorial, and that he would cause the sun to shine at the right times and the rain to fall. She believed in miracles. The bible was for her a living document. The tree memorial was a tribute to her love of her husband, but it was also a tribute to her love of God.

A couple of very difficult decades followed as she struggled to raise a family, working first as a jewelry designer and then later as a nurse. Then in the late 1980s, her life took a new turn. She saw her three children happily married, and was blessed with the birth of six grandchildren.

She also began attending the Sephardic Congregation in Chicago. She loved the people, she loved the service. But what she loved most of all was hearing the words of God being read every Saturday morning by the synagogue’s wonderful hazan. It was one of the great joys of her old age.

When she was too old to live alone, she moved to Chicago’s Self-Help Home, and spent her final five years living with people she loved, while being cared for by the home’s amazing staff. She grew up in Palestine in a community with a common purpose and a common faith. At Self-Help she found it again, among survivors and refugees who, like her, had established a new life in a foreign land.

The things of this world were alive to her in ways we can only begin to understand. Everything – a glass, a building, a house plant—every thing had a personality…and the potential to be beautiful. She loved trees, in particular. She would look at a tree and say: “Look at this fellow here…Look how proud he is.” She could connect to trees and find friendship in them. Some she liked, and some she didn’t. It’s no surprise that she planted hundreds of them, and cared for them as she would her children.

Years from now, when all of us will have left this earth, the earth will continue to tilt on its axis every spring, bringing this particular longitude and latitude a little closer to the sun. And her flowering crabs and honey locusts will feel that warmth, and they will burst into color, year after year, miraculously, paying tribute to her love for her husband and her love of God.

Press

She plants a living memorial

By Jack Mabley

Chicago Today, Monday July 6, 1970

A stretch of highway in Wilmette Ave-Glenview Road is a sterile, high-way department-maintenance expanse of concrete and weedy parkway.

I probably have used this road more than any living human, because for 30 years it has been the most direct line between my house and my wife's mother's cooking.

Months ago we noticed somebody had planted hundreds of small trees along the right of way. 

Who? It couldn't be the state or the county. There were too many. Not property owners, because it was public land, and too many parcels were involved.

Then we began seeing small gangs of youngsters watering and weeding and picking up trash along the way. Then a funny-looking green milk truck with a big water tank inside.

LAST WEEK WE FINALLY saw a handsome, tanned lady standing beside a truckload of debris, surrounded by perspiring kids.

She is Mrs. Burton A. Kolman, and she is the lady who made the tree memorial happen.

As Anita Gubali, she came to Chicago from Israel in 1950 to study law at DePaul University. She met Burton Kolman, a brilliant law student who had been blind since a baseball accident at Hirsch High School when he was 16.

They married. Kolman graduated first in his class, began a law practice and became a Circuit Court judge. In 1967, only 34 years old, Judge Kolman was stricken with a fatal heart attack while on the bench.

Mrs. Kolman wanted a living memorial and decided on the trees. "Trees are not only beautiful in their own right, but they do so much for the community," Mrs. Kolman told us.

"I came from the most beautiful village in Israel, with trees so beautiful that people came from all over the country just to look at them." Mrs. Kolman had energy, ingenuity, some material resources, 3 children, Joey, Bruce and Carmella, now 15, 14 and 9, loads of friend and a lot of love.

She drew upon all the resources, and on April 13, 1969, more than a thousand trees were planted between the Edens overpass and Crawford Avenue. Another thousand have gone in since then. There are first, 300 honey locusts, 600 flowering crabs and 800 French and Persian lilacs.

There were no easy shortcuts. They went out and rolled up their sleeves and dug holes and put in the trees. Some help is volunteer and Mrs. Kolman pays some.

JUDGE KOLMAN NEVER SAW this stretch of road, but he knew it, and he often spoke of its potential beauty. "I have a friend who also lost her husband at an early age," Mrs. Kolman said. "It took us a while, but now we realize that our husbands, despite their youth, really are dead. They will not come back. "But if I can restore something of my husband, even if it's only a tiny part, then I will have done something to see that he lives on."

The trees don't look like much yet. Trucks have hit some, and some didn't like the soil. But they are replaced and staked up and watered and fussed over, all 2,000 of them. Mrs. Kolman had to learn to drive a truck standing up. "I bounced all over the cab for a while, but finally I got the knack of it," she smiles.

WHEN AL PHILLIPS WENT to take pictures, Mrs. Kolman penned a note for him to bring back: 

"The gist of this story is that one can do a thing like this without a quarter of a million dollars, which contractors tell me this Tree Memorial is going to be worth in five years with our maintenance. “I had my youth and I poured all my love into it. I had no jewels to put into this little Taj Mahal. It is a continuous challenge, an urge in me to make this a place of beauty.”

Trees Grow in Memory of Widow’s Husband

Chicago Tribune

A Wilmette widow and "about 500 of my husband's personal friends" planted trees along an 18-block stretch of New Glenview road in Wilmette last week.

Mrs. Burton Kolman, 527 Romona rd., donated the trees in memory of her husband, who died two years ago. Judge Kolman, the first blind magistrate in Cook county Circuit court, died of a heart attack at age 34.

The 500 volunteers ["and that only includes adults--we don't even begin to count the children who helped," Mrs. Kolman said] were recruited by a personal letter inviting them to join her and her three children in planting the tree memorial for Burton A. Kolman.

"Much to my surprise, the weather turned out beautifully and everything was perfectly organized," Mrs. Kolman said. She arranged the people beforehand in 30 groups of 25 each, headed by a chief.

Before planting the trees, the crowd heard a benediction by Dr. Martin H. Bickham of the Wilmette Methodist church and Rabbi William Frankel of Conservative Congregation of the North Shore. Mayor Kenneth Santee of Wilmette expressed his appreciation for Mrs. Kolman's contribution to Wilmette.

"We planted close to 800 trees and some more remain to be planted, Mrs. Kolman said. Last week after the planting she had approximately 350 holes dug in preparation for this afternoon's planting, when she will finish the project with a smaller group of her friends.

The unplanted area, where Mrs. Kolman plans to work today, is the stretch of [New Glenview road] which goes over Edens expressway, and the triangle of Wilmette and Crawford avenues and Glenview road.

"After all the delay, it's so wonderful to have this project materialize," Mrs. Kolman said. Planting had been postponed three weeks because of bad weather and religious holidays.

Mrs. Kolman obtained permission to plant the trees from the Illinois Highway commission, with the approval of Wilmette village officials. Mayor Santee said the village engineer questioned the type and number of trees Mrs. Kolman had originally planned to put in.

"She was going to plant dry root trees--with no dirt packed around them--and too many of them," Mayor Santee said. "The other trees are more expensive, but she used much fewer than she originally planned, and they need less maintenance."

Mrs. Kolman had originally planned for 2,000 trees along [New Glenview road]. She plants to provide fertilizer herself, and homeowners along Glenview road have offered to help her water and maintain the trees, she said. "The only problem I can foresee is that if the neighbors who promised to help her go back on their offer," the mayor said.

Mrs. Kolman said she has spent more than $10,000 on the project so far "and I haven't even calculated all the costs yet."