Alumni from Vanderbilt’s Class of 1989 joined together to memorialize a tree in honor of deceased classmates. The year-long process of planning was initiated by Matthew Cortellesi (B.A. ‘89) and culminated on Nov. 8 in a ceremony to dedicate the tree. Alumni from the Class of 1989, who had flown in from all across the country to attend the event, gathered outside of Furman Hall where the tree was planted.
Through a class vote and the guidance of the university landscape architect, James Moore, the alumni chose to plant a red maple tree outside of Furman Hall. Cortellesi described what initially sparked the idea.
“When you’re 18 years old and you’re in college, you’re not thinking about [nature on campus]. You don’t take notice of the beauty that is around us on campus,” Cortellisi said. “Once I realized that the trees are an important part of the history and the present-day experience at Vanderbilt, that’s when I thought it would be a good idea to get the class involved and to do a class tree that would be dedicated on campus.”
After coming up with the idea, Cortellesi then reached out to Mary Nell Bryan (B.A. ‘89), who was student government president during her time at Vanderbilt and now runs the Class of 1989 Facebook page. Together, Bryan and Coretellesi pitched the idea of raising money for a tree dedication to the Facebook group. Official university policy stipulates that a tree can be planted on campus for a $5000 donation, and through a GoFundMe page, the class was able to raise nearly twice the amount they needed in three days.
McCallum Morley (M.S. ‘23), associate director of reunion and engagement in the alumni and relations department, described the fundraising process.
“From a fundraising standpoint, it had some complications with these funds coming from so many different parties, but once we were able to figure out a way to achieve it successfully and track all those donations in one fund for the tree, this was something that everyone was on board with,” Morley said.
Morley recalled how Bryan and Coretellesi approached him with the idea to dedicate a tree.
“They wanted to honor their friends, their classmates, people that mean a whole lot to them from a very special time in their lives and they knew that they were not the only ones who felt this way,” Morley said. “They came to me with the idea of crowdfunding a memorial tree as a class to provide a location on campus that alumni of the class could come back to serve as a personal reflective space — a gathering space — and they wanted it to be somewhere special on campus that represented the entire class and their memories of Vanderbilt.”
According to Morley, this is the first time a tree has been dedicated by an entire alumni class.
“This is a project that we’ve never really taken on from the development and alumni relations side,” Morley said. “We’ve had plenty of memorial trees planted on campus and memorial benches, but typically, we limit those to being funded by one to five individuals, so it was a unique proposition to try to crowdfund this from an entire class.”
In an email to The Hustler, Bryan described the different challenges the class faced in bringing this project to life, saying she hopes this dedication allows future classes to follow suit.
“Changing [Vanderbilt] policy to allow all of our classmates who wanted to contribute to do so was a time-consuming task as so many departments needed to get involved,” Bryan said.
Of the 1500 members of the Class of 1989, 200 attended the 35th reunion at which the tree was dedicated. Bryan described the response to the event.
“I knew every one of our deceased classmates. Some of them were very close friends, and that’s true for many in our class,” Bryan said. “All weekend long, people came up to me and said this was their favorite reunion ever. I think that’s pretty unusual for a 35th-year reunion. I believe it was largely due to coming together over the tree project.”
Bryan explained her belief in the significance of choosing a tree to memorialize their fallen classmates.
“A tree feels like a particularly appropriate way to honor those we miss and think of so often. It will continue to grow, which feels like a terrific living metaphor of the way our feelings for each other and for Vanderbilt grow ever stronger,” Bryan said. “We hope to raise money for a bench at the site of the tree for our 40th reunion.”
Bryan said she hopes the tree dedication will inspire future classes to follow in their footsteps.
“It takes a lot of work to coordinate the inner workings of Vanderbilt’s campus, so leaders from the Development Office, the Reunion Office, the Arboretum and elsewhere met with each other and hammered out an agreement that I hope will mean that future classes can honor deceased classmates in this way too,” Bryan said.
Cortellesi echoed this sentiment and emphasized his hopes for the future generations of Vanderbilt.
“The tree itself, we hope, will be a place people will be able to come [to] during reunion or during any time that they might be on campus where we might all gather collectively or individually and reflect upon all those beautiful things that we never noticed at the time that we were 18, and some of those friends of ours that are no longer with us,” Cortellesi said.
