GREELEY, Colo.—It’s a special day for remembrance. For thinking about how much they meant to us, the friends and family members, the soldiers and sailors and others who are gone now.
It was Memorial Day, and while most people visited cemeteries, a Greeley man is observing it in his own special way, with a 50-year-old cottonwood tree in his backyard.
Clyde Abbett’s wife, Roberta, died nine months ago, after they’d been married for 65 years.
“She was my steady,” the 89-year-old Abbett said from his home in west Greeley. “I can’t explain how wonderful it was to be married to her.”
So, after her death, Abbett wanted to honor his wife.
“The old cottonwood tree in our backyard was about 50 years old, and it was half-dead,” Clyde said. “When they cut it down, I told them to save about 10 feet of the stump.”
Then he called the Chainsaw Mama.
Faye Braaten of Loveland makes her living by creating art from old trees. She uses a chain saw as others would use a paintbrush to turn old trees into memorials.
Abbett told Braaten about his wife, about her love for flowers and about her career as a music teacher in Fort Lupton, and Braaten went to work. She created a tree carved with flowers and musical notes in tribute to Roberta.
Abbett now has high praise for the Chainsaw Mama.
He grew up on the family farm west of Platteville and continued to farm there until he retired. He still owns the Abbett farm, but someone else is farming it now.
Back in 1942, he met a music teacher in Fort Lupton.
“I asked her out on a date,” Abbett says. “I was lucky she said ‘yes.’ ”
They “courted” for two years, Abbett said, and on Dec. 31, 1944, they married at the Baptist church in Fort Lupton. Roberta and Clyde stayed at the farm, where he worked the fields and she taught music.
“I’m not sure why she married me,” Abbett said. “I’m just a very lucky guy.”
They lived on the family farm for almost 50 years, then moved to Greeley to the house with the old cottonwood tree in the backyard. They had two daughters, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
When Roberta died last year, she was buried in the family plot in the Platteville Cemetery.
“Sometimes, it’s just too far for me to go,” said Abbett, who uses a walker and sometimes a cane to get around. “But now I can visit Roberta every day in our backyard.”
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Information from: Greeley Daily Tribune,
