Easton plants Cedar of Lebanon tree at Arbor Day ceremony, honoring Lebanese community’s 125-year roots in the city

EASTON, Pa. — A Cedar of Lebanon tree grown from a seed tied to a 1960 gift from Lebanon to the United States was planted Tuesday at Hackett Park in Easton, in a ceremony the city designated as its Arbor Day observance and honoring the city’s Lebanese-American community.

Easton Vice Mayor Frank Pintabone organized the planting over the past year in recognition of what he called the Lebanese community’s role in Easton’s growth. The event drew residents, church members and city officials to the park Tuesday afternoon.

“The Lebanese community is so instrumental in the growth of the city and everything that’s happening in the city of Easton,” Pintabone said. “It was something I wanted to do to honor the community.”

The tree was donated by Bassem Samaan, a Lebanese immigrant who moved to the Lehigh Valley in 1992 and runs Trees of Joy, an online nursery based in the Bethlehem area.

Samaan grew the cedar from seed over four years — a seed he obtained from a tree planted at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., which itself was brought from Lebanon as a gift in 1960.

“The mother tree came from Lebanon in 1960,” Samaan said. “It was planted at the National Shrine in Washington, D.C. I was able to get some cones from that mother tree. I planted the seed four years ago, and with care it has grown to the tree that it looks like today.”

Only a handful of viable seedlings emerged from that batch of cones, Samaan said. A sibling tree from the same batch was planted at the United Nations headquarters in 2025, he said.

“I wanted to make sure it has a special meaning,” Samaan said.

The ceremony came amid an active war in Lebanon. Israel launched a military offensive against Hezbollah on March 2, 2026, following Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel; more than 1,400 people have been killed and over 1.2 million displaced in Lebanon since then, according to Lebanese authorities.

Pintabone, whose family is from northern Lebanon, said a question from an Arab-American journalist the day before the event prompted him to reflect on the planting’s significance beyond its local context.

“So many people here, so many members of our community, have families suffering over there again,” Pintabone said. “So this is a little bit of hope for us and for them.”

Mayor Sal Panto Jr. issued the city’s annual Arbor Day proclamation at the ceremony, marking April 7, 2026, as Easton’s Arbor Day observance for the year. National Arbor Day falls on April 24.

Panto said it is the 154th anniversary of Arbor Day as a national holiday and that Easton has held Tree City, USA status for 34 consecutive years.

Rob Christopher, the city’s conservation manager and urban forester, planted 200 trees across Easton in the past year, Panto said.

Panto, who has a 45-foot Cedar of Lebanon in his own front yard, noted the cedar forest is a central episode in the Epic of Gilgamesh, an approximately 4,000-year-old poem.

The Lebanese community has been present in Easton since the late 19th century. According to Peter Karam, a church member who manages the social media and written history for Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Catholic Church, immigrants from the village of Kfarsghab in northern Lebanon first arrived in the United States in 1880.

Their permanent foothold in Easton took shape in 1901, when a group originally bound for Australia was redirected and settled in the city with the help of a New York merchant, Karam said.

Early arrivals built lives through peddling and small businesses, Karam said, forming a Maronite community despite language barriers, illness and economic hardship.

One group in 1912, he said, missed a sailing on the Titanic due to a travel delay. During World War II, 39 men and two women from the Kfarsghabi community served in the U.S. military; several did not return.

The community was centered on Lehigh Street in what was known as “Lebanese Town,” Karam said, until urban redevelopment in the late 1960s. When the Redevelopment Authority demolished the Lehigh Street church in 1969, the congregation relocated to its current home at South 4th and Ferry streets.

Later generations spread across the region, Karam said, entering business, law, medicine and civic life while maintaining ties to Kfarsghab and the broader Lebanese diaspora.

Lebanese Heritage Days, the church’s annual cultural festival, has been held nearly every summer since 1978, according to church records. Mayor Panto described it as one of Easton’s largest community events by attendance.

Pintabone said he had been thinking about planting a cedar tree since last year’s Lebanese flag raising, which he described as one of the city’s largest flag-raising ceremonies by attendance. He reached out to Samaan, who offered to donate a tree.

“Just like a tree in how it got transplanted from Lebanon and planted here — that’s me,” Samaan said. “I’m just feeling proud that I grew something from seed and it got to be like this big event.”

After formal remarks, community members — including children — took turns shoveling soil around the cedar’s base.

Pintabone said there are no immediate plans for similar plantings honoring other ethnic communities, but noted those decisions are typically left to the city forester and the mayor.

“We have so many different ethnicities and different groups that we want to honor,” he said.