Christmas Tree 2005

Rockefeller Center

Tree and a Memory
BY AUSTIN FENNER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Thursday, November 10th, 2005

A giant Norway spruce nurtured by a big-hearted New Jersey woman who died in 2003 has been given to Rockefeller Center as the city's Christmas tree.
"She would have loved the idea of it going to Rockefeller Center," said her husband, Arnold Raquet, 73. "One of my biggest reasons for doing it is to honor her memory."

Gloria Raquet died after a surgical procedure couldn't correct a stomach aneurysm, he said. She was 58.

The Raquets moved from Brooklyn to Wayne, N.J., 42 years ago, when his employer relocated the company to New Jersey.
They moved into a modest Cape Cod that had a 6-foot pine in the front yard.
"She had a green thumb," said Arnold Raquet. "She put fertilizer on it. I think that's what made the tree grow as it did."
And boy, did it!
Gloria Raquet's tree grew to become the neighborhood beanstalk at an amazing 74 feet and 18,000 pounds.
The couple's daughter Evelyn Zerenner, 36, of Newark, Del., watched with mixed emotion as 10 landscapers from Torsilieri Inc. cut down the mighty evergreen and lowered it onto a flatbed truck.
"As a kid, I ran around it and climbed on it," she recalled. "I always remember hanging on the branches."
The perfectly triangular tree will be set up in Rockefeller Center about 10:30 a.m. today. The traditional lighting ceremony, which will be broadcast on TV, will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 30.
Arnold Raquet smiled like a proud father as a landscaper sliced through the trunk of the 48-year-old tree with a 54-inch chain saw in less than 30 seconds.
"I'm very thrilled," said Raquet, who snapped some photographs of the cutting.
"She was the love of my life," he said of his wife. "There isn't another one like her."