To be honest, we were a little concerned after we published our Dec. 9 story about our sad saps. Three days after our call for adoptive parents — and one day away from our deadline — we had just one response.

Thankfully, Anne Russell, site director at Mount Vernon Elementary School in Gainesville, stepped forward to adopt Tiny Tim. Her class was doing a production of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” she said, and she was hoping to feature Tim as Charlie Brown’s pick of the tree lot.

But that still left Cyrus the Cypress and Malibu without a home for Christmas.

Not wanting our sad trees to go to waste, we contacted the good folks at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hall County, where they asked around and found a couple suitable homes.

But then, just after we dropped off the last of our sad saps, a call came from a family in need. It seemed Quinshayla Burce had been having a hard time of it, with a 2-year-old suffering from short bowel syndrome and, because he has been in the hospital since about the time he was born, she hasn’t been able to work.

Even though we had just found homes for our sad saps, we knew there were more out there. So, we called Andy Kinsey at Kinsey Family Farm, and he said he’d do us one better: He’d give Burce a real tree.

So, happily, all our trees have nice, happy homes for Christmas. You can read all their stories here and learn about their adoptive families.

Tiny Tim

A small sapling from the tree farm, Tiny Tim was little in size but big in heart. And Anne Russell recognized that.

“I often think of orphan Christmas trees, grown specifically to be cherished and then left in the lot, not fulfilling their purpose in life,” she wrote in an e-mail requesting to adopt Tiny Tim. “We are doing a scene from “A Charlie Brown Christmas” for our parents ... We would dearly love to have Tiny Tim as our prop.”
How could we say no?

One week before Christmas, Tiny Tim stood, as proudly as ever, on the stage in the gymnasium at the school. Russell, the director of the after school programs at the school, said the kids were “so pumped up” to see the tree.

“Some of them aren’t real familiar with Charlie Brown like we are,” she said of the traditional Christmas cartoon. “I’m like, ‘That’s the way it’s supposed to be.’ A lot of them had never even seen the TV show. We brought in a little laptop so they could see the scene that they will be doing.”

The students were performing one scene from the “Charlie Brown Christmas” story, where Charlie Brown is trying to cast the Christmas play.

Julia Jackson, a third-grader at Mount Vernon who was playing Charlie Brown, said she thought Tiny Tim was perfectly fine.

“I liked it,” she said. “I think (the decorations) are cool.” 

Malibu and Cyrus the Cypress

While both trees had grown to the full-sized, majestic trees, they each bore scars.

Malibu, true to her California roots, enjoyed the sun and the outdoors, but she also suffered a fire that left the tips of her branches red. And Cyrus, who served as protector of his woodland friends at the tree farm, had become curved and misshapen after years of feeling the brunt of the wind on the side of the hill.

Maybe, they thought, someone can come for us.

As time went by after their stories were published in the paper, no one stepped forward. Fearing they would be destined for the wood chipper, we put the call out to some local organizations who might know of someone in need of a tree with heart — but not good looks.

Thankfully, The Boys and Girls Clubs of Hall County stepped forward and, after a bit of asking around, found two children who were in need of a tree.

“They went to two families from the Boys and Girls Club here,” said Bilal Ali, director at the club. “We asked around, because we didn’t know who. ... And once we narrowed it down, our Latino Outreach Program was able to find a couple kids ... They’re in a good place.”

And although the names of the children who adopted the trees was lost in the daily after-school activity at the Boys and Girls Club, Ali said the chance to give two trees to two deserving families helps create a family tradition.

“For a child to be able to get a tree, to place it in their home and spend time decorating it with their family, I think it’d be meaningful for the children,” he said. “You can never have enough here, because we have so many children from so many different circumstances.

“We get a lot of support from the community. We are grateful to accept anything we can for the children, anything that we can use, and we have gracious donors who give to the Boys and Girls Club. We have a wonderful organization here.

Every day, more than 250 children come to the Boys and Girls Clubs and participate in programs that teach lessons such as leadership, life skills, sports and art.

“We develop future leaders of our community with these programs,” Ali said. “If we can change one life, it’s as if we have saved a whole lot of lives. If we let one life walk out of here without trying to change them, it’s as if we have hurt one generation, with their children. This is our job, to change their minds.

From a forgotten tree to a happyhome

Just after Malibu and Cyrus were dropped off at The Boys and Girls Clubs, we received a letter.

“We are a loving and caring family, and we open our hearts to anyone in need, such as the saplings,” wrote Quinshayla Burce.

But it was much more than that. It seemed Burce’s youngest son, 2-year-old Sincere, was born two months premature and suffers from short bowel syndrome. His long intestine is 27 centimeters long, and as a result he has spent most of his short life in the hospital.

He needed a liver transplant after he was born, and the family has recently learned he is deaf. Because of all this, Burce hasn’t been able to work until recently, and has relied on help from other family members for childcare (her other children are 4 and 6 years old).

But there was one problem: We had given all the trees away.

So, we called Andy Kinsey at Kinsey Family Farm in Cumming, home to Tiny Tim and Malibu, and asked if he had one more sad sapling that needed a home.

“I’ll do you one better — I’ll give ‘em a real tree,” he said.

And so Burce and her three children were able to enjoy Christmas around a tree. Because money’s tight this year, she had told her children to pray for one — but she didn’t have her hopes up.

“I’ve been explaining to my kids, ‘Momma, we don’t have no Christmas tree, we don’t have no presents.’ And I feel so bad because I’m like, ‘We don’t have money for these.’ I’m a single parent trying to do it by myself.

“I said, ‘Well, we’re going to get a tree.’ And so we pray every night, and we pray for a Christmas tree and some toys to go under it,” she said. “And it made me cry because I was like, ‘We don’t have any money to buy anything for Christmas.”

When she saw the stories about the trees, she said her oldest son had an idea. He was the one who asked her to write a letter to the newspaper.

“I said, ‘What can we say?’ and he said, ‘Well, we’re a good family and we’ll take good care of that Christmas tree.’”