Longtime residents donate Arlington Heights' Christmas tree

Since moving into the family's Arlington Heights home, Helga Stephansen has watched the sapling she and her husband Charles planted in their side yard 33 years ago grow into a majestic evergreen tree.

Wednesday, she watched it come down.

She busily captured the bittersweet moment on her iPad as Arlington Heights village workers cut the 40-foot tree down and gingerly placed it on a flatbed truck before transporting it to North School Park, where it will stand as her hometown's 2015 Christmas tree.

"It's such a great tree, but it's getting to the end of it's life," Helga said. "I'm just happy they used it."

She said the village will come back later and plant sod in the spot where the massive tree once stood, but she might wind up putting in a new tree when spring comes.

The whole operation took workers about an hour. Village electrician Mike Graves operated the crane that lowered the tree to the truck bed. Outside of getting an abandoned squirrel's nest wrapped in the crane's moorings, Graves said the operation was fairly routine.

"I've been doing this for at least the past 10 years and this was one of the easier ones," he said. "The really big ones are trickier because you don't want to accidentally drop it on someone's house."

Helga said she offered up the tree this past summer and didn't hear from the village for a while. Eventually, a village official said they'd take the tree off her hands.

"He said he liked the top of it," Helga recalled.

This is the 25th year the village has held an annual tree-lighting ceremony. It will take place at North School Park, located at Eastman Street and Arlington Heights Road, shortly after dusk on Friday, Nov. 27, village officials said.