OXFORD, Ga. - A crowd of children, parents, citizens and officials packed the municipal room inside the Oxford City Hall Feb. 3 for Oxford's 2018 Arbor Day celebration of the city's 20th anniversary as a Tree City USA and Oxford College of Emory University's fourth year as a Tree Campus USA. 

Greeted by cocoa and goodies from Oxford College's Bon Appetit and welcomed by Trees, Parks, Recreation Board Leader Cheryl Ready, the audience settled in for the program. 

Members of Boy and Cub Scout Packs 211 led the pledge.  Mayor Jerry Roseberry proclaimed the official day.  Former City Manager Bob Schwartz received the City's Friends of Trees award for his consistent support of the work of TPR.  City and College accepted Arbor Day Foundation awards for maintaining annual requirements for membership.

Students from Flint Hill Elementary School and Montessori School of Covington received prizes for their winning poems.  Washington Street Children's Choir performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” and special Arbor Day songs.  MSC middle school students presented a play adapted from Kathryn Galbraith's “Arbor Day Square.”  A slide presentation showed Oxford College students at work on MLK Service Day as they planted 54 understory seedlings in the City's new park site.  Andy Offutt Irwin, storyteller extraordinaire, delivered a funny yet serious dramatic poem.

Everyone had opportunity to take home a gift of either a dogwood or swamp oak sapling, provided by a special friend of Oxford and the Georgia Urban Forest Commission.  In City Hall park, two faithful Georgia Foresters instructed observers while planting this year's Arbor Day tree, a hardy Japanese maple.