I pulled over last month while driving down Logan Street in Louisville’s Shelby Park neighborhood. I spotted a small memorial encircled by scuffed-up salvaged bricks under a young tree decorated with a red bow and bouquets. The recent planting showed tell-tale signs of TreesLouisville, a local non-profit.
A friendly man told me his friend O.B. had hung out on the adjacent steep steps. One day O.B. lost his balance, hit his head on the hard sidewalk, and died.
Minutes later a woman walked by, smiled, and said she was O.B.’s cousin. I told her I was sorry.
I could identify the flowers both real and fake, but I didn’t recognize the tree. I was curious.
Maurice Oberton “O.B.” Coward 61, passed away on April 30, 2026. His brother Michael predeceased him. O.B. is survived by his brothers Terry, Ricky, and Toddie.
O.B. Coward’s brother, Toddie, with Euonymus grandiflorus ‘Ebony Green’
German Catholic immigrants living around Shelby Street were targets of Louisville’s Bloody Monday immigration riot of 1855. Sentiments gradually changed. Ten years later, Louisville elected a German mayor. Shelby Park was designed by the Olmsted Firm in 1907 with the large German community in mind. Recreation was a focus. Park features included athletic amenities for baseball, track, croquet, and gymnasiums for men and women. A Carnegie Library opened on the park’s edge in 1911.
A local renaissance
Following white flight to the suburbs in the 1970s, Shelby Park withstood a long period of declining use, neglected maintenance and physical decay that persisted until the 1990s. Jefferson County Public Schools attempted to take over Shelby Park in 1999, but neighbors, local officials, and the Olmsted Parks Conservancy saved the 17-acre park. I asked a food vendor at the nearby Logan Street Market about his current assessment. He grinned and said, “The neighborhood and park are public again.”
Shelby Street, beginning at the corner of East Kentucky, and heading south, is a pleasant block of long, colorful shotgun houses squeezed together on narrow lot lines. Many homes have porches, a neighborly architectural feature of the late 19th and early 20th century. A few curbsides are planted with coreopsis, gaillardia, evening primrose, dappled by dandelion and white-flowering hedge parsley interlopers.
A well-fed cat roamed Shelby Street in and out of the shade of zelkovas, redbuds, crabapples, a tulip poplar, and newer plantings from TreesLouisville.
Around the block at the corner of St. Catherine and Logan Street were TreesLouisville plantings under power lines next to Idlewild Butterfly Farm. Smaller-growing trees: Cornus kousa ‘Greensleeves, Syringa pekinensis ‘Great Wall’, Cornus mas ‘Saffron Sentinel.’ It was hard to miss Idlewild’s magnificent elderberry growing through a chain-link fence. Their back garden was full of pollinator friendly borage, zinnias, butterfly weed— even stinging nettles. (I touched a leaf for foolproof identification. I knew better. It stung.)
Elderberry at Idlewild Butterfly Farm
If it’s an unusual tree, Mike Hayman is the usual suspect
The retired Courier-Journal photojournalist got the tree bug in middle age and got it bad. I emailed Mike and asked him about the mystery tree—and memorial. He is now the senior projects director of TreesLouisville. Their headquarters are a few blocks away.
Mike went by to look at the mystery tree and met Toddie Coward, O.B. Coward’s youngest brother. Toddie created most of the memorial. “It’s good for TreesLouisville to see the trees they planted around Shelby Park and nearby Smoketown, become a part of the community,” Mike said.
Matt Thomas of TreesLouisville knew O.B. and would often see him on the street close to the TreesLouisville office. Morgan Grubbs wrote a remembrance in the June newsletter— “O.B. was a regular walk-by friend of our staff…Mike Hayman’s photo shows O.B.’s brother Toddie sitting next to the memorial with gifts from his community—a true sign that trees offer us so much in terms of peace, gathering, remembrance, and strength.”
Toddie Coward often sits in a folding chair, on the Shelby Street sidewalk in the shade, fifty feet from his brother’s memorial tree. He waves regularly to friends who drive by. His brothers live nearby, and so do cousins—“So many I can’t count them all.”
Mike Hayman and Cindi Sullivan, TreesLouisville’s charismatic and indefatigable executive director, often say, “It’s not just about the trees, it’s also about the people and improving the life and health of this community.” They give thanks to Henry Heuser their friend and TreesLouisville founder. Heuser is a businessman, civic legend, longtime tree lover and people connector. “Henry and Cindi know everyone,” Hayman said. That makes a difference.
Toddie Coward sits by a memorial he made for his brother Maurice. Mike Hayman photo.
It was no surprise: TreesLouisville planted the mystery tree
Hayman identified O.B.’s precocious eight-footer as Euonymus grandiflorus ‘Ebony Green’, a selection of a small, semi-evergreen, temperate species from the woodlands of southeast Asia. He sourced the tree from rabid tree collectors at Sunshine Nursery in Clinton, OK. “I’ve known Steve Bieberbach for 30 years. He was my source for southwestern trees. Now I am working with his grandson Kadin.” Hayman said.
Dark green leaves and tiny pale-yellow to beige blooms of the grand euonymus were evident. But I need to wait for the red to fall color. The tree will grow to approximately 20’.
Hayman thinks it is prudent to experiment with successful landscape trees from other parts of the country—like Oklahoma—that are hotter and drier. He’s also experimenting with lacey oak (Quercus laceyi) from Texas that appears happy so far. “We need to adapt to warming temperatures in the next hundred years,” Hayman said.
The average life expectancy for a tree planted in an ordinary tree well is a scant 7-10 years. Upfront amendments can increase the life expectancy of a tree well planting in tough spots, many under power lines, to 50 years. A typical tree well is 5’ x 5.’ Trees Louisville enlists a contractor to enlarge tree wells to 5’ x 8’ and 2’ deep. Dense grade aggregate and compacted soil are dug out, and the hole is filled with a beneficial garden soil mix.
There are many beautiful leafy neighborhoods in Louisville
On the flip side are scattered barren, treeless heat islands centered principally around downtown. Dr. Brian Stone of Georgia Tech was in Louisville last week. He updated his 2016 report that had singled Louisville out for having the hottest urban heat index in the country. This is the temperature differential between Louisville’s urban core and outlying rural areas. Louisville’s downtown has 4%-5% tree coverage. This compares unfavorably to New York’s 21% and Chicago’s 17%. New York has 50 miles of lineal trees. Dr. Jones praised West Main Street’s historic cast iron architecture. He admitted downtown Atlanta had nothing comparable, but he warned, “If you’re going to be economically viable you need more trees downtown.”
Tree selection makes a difference
A few trees won’t make it three years. The majority can make it longer with periodic watering the first two years and structural pruning for the first ten years. Larger canopy trees for lawns and open spaces? Hayman suggest native oaks: bur, shingle, chinkapin, and swamp white oaks. Also, black gum cultivars: ‘Firemaster’, ‘Red Rage’ and ‘Wildfire.’ Plus, Gingko (males) and Dawn redwood cultivars: ‘Amber Glow’ and ‘Jade Prince.’ These can all survive for 100 years or more.
I spent my 75th birthday in late May at a fundraiser dinner for the West End School at Perso’s restaurant, a couple of blocks away from O.B’s tree. The school supporters sang Happy Birthday. I was touched.
My birthday wish?
I hope TreesLouisville and O.B.’s tree have many more tree rings to add.
* * *
Please read James Bruggers’ Inside Climate News article about Trees Louisville: Helping trees—and Louisville— outrace climate change. The dedicated and award-winning reporter died this week. Connor Griffin, of Louisville’s Courier-Journal, called Bruggers a “giant of environmental journalism.”
Thank you, Allen, for another uplifting article!
I like your story. Thanks.
Seems tree lovers come in all colors. Ours here in the Willy Street neighborhood of Madison is always all in purple, from shoes to hat. Truly Remarkable Loon juggled for generations of kids, and in retirement has been propagating and giving away seedlings of notable neighborhood trees at the local co-op. The tag reads, “Be the Lorax – take me home.” I now have three in my yard. The first a Kentucky Coffee Tree, is growing like a weed, and already reaching 20 feet. The second is a red oak, looking at this stage appropriately like a Truffula Tree (minus the candy stripe trunk). And the third is a Cycropia oak, a bur oak with a pedigree. At two feet it will take a while to catch up to its parent, a magnificent specimen in nearby Orton Park, our neighborhood oak opening. There, every year on a magical August evening, the Cycropia Aerial Dance troupe rigs that tree with all sorts of gadgetry, and whirls, twirls, spins and swings to the oohs and aahs of hundreds of families on blankets laid out hours in advance, while stilt walkers and assorted forest nymphs weave among the crowd. T. R. Loon (his legal name) lives in a purple house across the street.
Brilliant
A warning about black gum ‘Wildfire’. Tupelo is my favorite tree and when I moved to central VA at an advanced age, I knew the native would not grow much for the rest of my years. I was told about the cultivar ‘Wildfire’. Sounded like a great find…it was not! I have/had 3. One got too large for the bed it was in and I cut it down. The other 2 are growing well…except, they sprout all over the place from their roots. The one I cut down has sprouted so badly in the bed it was removed from most of my perennials have died, or have these sprouts coming up in them. The other two are not sprouting as badly but they are showing up in my grass area.
I don’t know if it is the root stock that is the problem or not. The man who told me about them and sold them to me has died. Additionally, the fall color is not anything close to the natives red, orange, and yellow at the same time.
Wildfire would not be a suitable tree for a tree box and certainly not for a small yard as most city lots are. I can only imagine the destruction these sprouts could cause in a yard or area not regularly taken care of. They would become a major invasive tree.
Letitia, thanks for your observation. I asked Mike Hayman, who is featured in the story, and this is what he said…
The roots of Wildfire are not Wildfire roots. They are ordinary blackgum seedlings used as grafted or budded rootstock.
That is true of all blackgum cultivars…their roots are ordinary blackgum seedlings.
All blackgums can sucker up from roots, especially if injured, but Wildfire is no different than any of them.
If you plant a Blackgum into a garden bed where you dig out weeds and dig to plant herbaceous plants, you will nick Blackgum roots and cause root suckers.
There probably are variations among blackgums in how much they sucker. I don’t know how you know that when you buy a tree, but you cannot identify a clone as good or bad because none of the clones are on their own roots.
I don’t know what a tree box is but it sounds small. Blackgums are canopy trees and require large root runs to thrive.
Wildfire was discovered in a pot nursery on the west coast which is not where it evolved because it is not native there. It is likely southern seed sourced because it is late growing and borderline hardy in Zone 6.
It is the fastest growing blackgum cultivar.
Wildfire never should be sold with the expectation that it will have consistent fall color. It does not. The color tags sold with Wildfire are false. It can have fall color but not as consistently as other clones.
On the other hand, it does have a brief burgundy spring color on emerging leaves. That is its unique trait.
It has good architecture. It is one of the best for resistance to leaf spot.
Like many of Allen Bush’s pieces I’ve been saving this for a quiet Saturday morning when I can take my time and sip my coffee. I’m never disappointed.