It all started with a faithful mom looking for some kinship and a magnolia tree that quite literally owes its roots to the White House.
About nine years ago, Kristin Schell decided to plan a neighborhood backyard get-together. There was just one problem: she forgot she didn’t have much in the way of lawn furniture.
Figuring a picnic table would give her the biggest bang for her buck, she ordered two from her local Lowe’s. After the party, she placed one of the tables under the beautiful magnolia tree in the front yard of her Austin, Texas home.
The tree, as it turns out, traces back to a magnolia tree planted at the White House by President Andrew Jackson in memory of his late wife Rachel.
A century after Jackson’s era, when First Lady “Lady Bird” Johnson first set eyes on the tree, she loved it so much that she took six of its cuttings and planned to grow more trees from them.
She gave one of the saplings to then-White House Press Secretary George Christian, who after some prodding from his wife, planted it in the front yard of their Austin, Texas home—which is where Ms. Schell now lives.
It would be just about a half century later that Ms. Schell’s soon-to-be-famous picnic table would sit under the same, now fully-grown, imposing magnolia tree. “It literally kind of takes my breath away,” Ms. Schell said. One day, a thought occurred to her, “like a lightbulb going off in your brain.” Instead of doing glitter projects and pizza nights in the backyard, “what if we did them in our front yard?” And so, she left the table where it was and brightened it up by painting it her favorite turquoise color. Soon, her neighbors took up a seat at the table for some casual conversation.
That was just the beginning.
Little did she know that a happenstance and her neighborly gesture would end up fostering what has become an international icon, a book deal, and, ultimately, a vibrant beacon of hope that cellphones and social media can still be second to old-fashioned get-togethers.
