NIAMH O'SULLIVAN,
Madam, - A sycamore still stands proudly in the Gettysburg street through which Abraham Lincoln passed on route to deliver his famous address. In Fredericksburg, at the former Union Army Headquarters in Chatham, two ancient and gnarled Catalpa trees seen by President Lincoln, the poet Walt Whitman and our own Thomas Francis Meagher of 1848, are now supported and preserved with the help of metal rods through their trunks. In Manassas, also known as Bull Run, a single majestic tree stands yet on the field where General "Stonewall" Jackson received his nickname 141 years ago.
They are called "Witness Trees". We have some here in Ireland too, in Dublin's O'Connell Street - noble trees that were wounded during the Easter Rising of 1916 and survived. They also made it through the siege of O'Connell Street during the early days of our own Civil War. Now we are cutting them down as they are proving inconvenient to the success of some high profile projects. Surely they have earned our respect and protection? Our veneration? - Yours, etc.,
NIAMH O'SULLIVAN,
Monkstown Avenue,
Co Dublin.