HARRISTOWN - A chill in the air and a little curly haired dog provided an appropriate autumn atmosphere for the planting of a pear tree and an apple tree in Harristown.

Kathleen Jensen, who teaches at Harristown Grade School, led her students Thursday on a walk from the school to her historic home for a lesson on arboreal management. Accompanying them was Catherine Roosevelt, a student at Millikin University, whose many-greats-grandfather was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's great-uncle James.

The president was born and raised in Hyde Park, N.Y., on an estate named Springwood, Jensen told her students, and he loved trees.

"When he went to vote at Hyde Park, what do you think he wrote down that he was?" Jensen asked her students. "When I go to vote, I proudly write down that I'm a teacher. Roosevelt wrote that he was a tree farmer, not that he was the president or the commander-in-chief."

Jensen visited Hyde Park during the summer and found out that her home was built the same year as Springwood, and that's where she met Catherine Roosevelt, who was visiting the presidential library at the same time.

The chance meeting and a quote of FDR's from 1936 - "There is nothing in nature I am as fond of as a tree" - gave her an idea. To teach her students about living trees and about family trees, she asked Catherine Roosevelt to visit her class.

President Roosevelt's favorite tree was the tulip poplar, Jensen said, and she showed her students two of those in her own yard. She also has a white ash tree grown from a seed from the Eleanor Roosevelt White Ash, which grows at Springwood.

It turns out the ash tree is also Catherine Roosevelt's favorite. She grew up in Edwardsville in an area with a lot of trees.

"The ash was my favorite because it had a lot of low branches, and I liked to climb it when I was a kid," she said. "Unfortunately, my parents cut it down when I was about 11, but they did it so they could put in a pool, so that was OK."

Johnny Martin's grandparents have an apple tree, but he said he doesn't climb it to get apples.

"I get a chair and stand on that," he said.

And Devan Lee said she just enjoyed visiting her teacher's home.

"I appreciate her letting us walk here to her house," Devan said.

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