Meyerland’s ‘Hero Tree’ in danger
Meyerland memorial planting in honor of pilot is succumbing to age, construction
An oak tree memorializing Capt. Gary Herod, who died a hero’s death when his plane crashed near Meyerland, was planted more than 50 years ago near the intersection of Beechnut and Endicott. An arborist says the tree is in decline.
For more than half a century, the live oak has sprawled gracefully along the northern side of the Meyerland Plaza shopping center.
It rises from a sea of concrete, its trunk crammed between a vast parking lot and the cracked sidewalk that lines Beechnut Street.
A marker at its base declares it the “Hero Tree” — dedicated in 1961 to Gary L. Herod, a man who sacrificed his life to save others.
Everyone had heard the story back then — how Herod, an Air Force pilot, crash-landed his jet one night in an open field near Brays Bayou so his plane wouldn’t land in a neighborhood full of unsuspecting families. The chamber of commerce dedicated a tree in the new, popular Meyerland Plaza so everyone could see the tree and appreciate it. A few years later, Houston ISD named a school Herod Elementary.
Live oak ‘in decline’
Fifty-seven years later, as Herod’s story is starting to fade, so is the tree.
It’s hidden behind a construction fence now, a few dozen yards away from where a closed BBVA Compass Bank will soon be torn down to make way for a new H-E-B.
An arborist has declared the live oak to be “in decline,” strangled by concrete and likely not strong enough to handle the stress of new construction.
The tree was dedicated in honor of Capt. Herod, of the Texas Air National Guard, who died a hero’s death when his plane crash-landed near Meyerland.
In March 1961, the 31-year-old pilot was flying a T-33 jet trainer over Houston. The engine malfunctioned, and although Herod tried to make it to an airstrip a few miles away, he realized he wouldn’t make it that far.
‘Died a hero’
He had two options: He could bail out, but the plane would likely crash-land in the middle of a subdivision. Or he could stay in the cockpit and guide the plane toward a clearing, where he wouldn’t hurt or kill anyone.
He chose to stick with his plane and die rather than abandon it and save his own life. Herod crashed his plane in an open field near Brays Bayou.
Immediately, Herod was hailed as a hero.
Two months later, the tree was dedicated to Herod — “who died a hero,” according to the marker at the tree’s base, for “staying with and guiding his falling jet plane away from the populous Meyerland-Westbury area.”
Charles Goforth, a Houston real estate agent, was perhaps the first to notice the Hero Tree’s trouble. He grew up in a house around the corner, he said, and the tree “was a big part of my childhood memories.”
Every Sunday, Goforth’s family would go to an ice cream shop across Beechnut from the tree. Sometimes, he recalls, “my sister would lift me up into the tree. I remember sitting up in that tree eating my ice cream.”
So when Goforth noticed that the Hero Tree was starting to look a little sickly — and that it would soon be in the middle of a construction zone — he asked an arborist to examine it.
In February, Steve Navarro of Embark Tree and Landscape Services sent back a memo declaring the tree in decline.
About 30 percent of the crown has “die-back,” Navarro’s memo said, mostly on the west side.
“Decline of this tree could be the result of several factors associated with growing in the middle of a retail parking lot,” he wrote, “which is not the best setting for this tree to thrive.” Navarro predicted the Hero Tree would continue to decline and eventually die.
This week, Goforth gave the news to Cynthia Herod Lichtman, the pilot’s daughter.
Lichtman was just 3½ years old when her father died. Her brother wasn’t even born until a couple of months after the crash.
But she remembers going to visit the tree as a child with her mother and brother.
“It made all of us very proud that they wanted to do that,” Lichtman said.
Family memorial
Lichtman and her family live in North Texas now. She’s in Whitesboro and her mother, who just turned 91, lives in assisted living in Denton. Even so, they come to Houston to visit the tree.
“We didn’t get to go this year,” she said. “But last year, we brought Mom.”
Lichtman doesn’t think the tree looks so unhealthy — after all, most of it is still green and graceful, standing tall. But “with all the things stacked against it, it’s probably not going to make it long-term,” she said. “Which is pretty sad, really.”
Eventually, a more permanent memorial might pay tribute to Herod’s sacrifice, perhaps closer to the site of the crash which is less than 2 miles away.
Lichtman said she’d like to see a permanent memorial — even though it might have made her father blush.
“He wouldn’t have thought of himself as a hero,” Lichtman said of Gary Herod. “He would have probably been kind of shy about that.”