By Noah Kinnisten, Staff Writer

For most people, the holiday season is a happy time when everyone can come together and spend time with their family. But for others, the holiday season is not as jolly.

The Trees of Hope organization was started by Edith Deltgen, a German woman who moved to the Outer Banks years ago and has had a very difficult life – she has lost three of her own children to drug addiction, cancer and mental illness. 

Trees of Hope involves messages on fabric strips being and wrapped around trees to signify grief, hope and healing for the less fortunate and for those who are struggling right now.

“There are messages hanging on the trees which are written by inmates at a prison where you could see a sign of hope and feel like there was change,” art teacher Alice Baldwin said. “Someone from outside the community was helping them and giving them a gateway to express their emotions, and I was really feeling emotional.”  

Deltgen contacted art teacher Jenna Saunders and asked if she thought her students would enjoy making strips and coming to help hang and wrap the trees with them. One day in November, all of Saunders’ and Baldwin’s classes walked to the Kill Devil Hills Library and hung and wrapped an assortment of these fabric strips around the trees to make a beautiful piece of art with an even more important message.

“She got all excited about having help because she does a lot of it by herself,” Saunders said.  

Some students saw the trees as positive, while others viewed them as somber.

“A lot of the messages were about keeping hope and keeping the faith, so it’s really uplifting,”  junior Dylan Custer said.

Added Saunders: “I feel like a lot of people took it pretty seriously.”

The trees brought out emotions that you wouldn’t normally see in a regular classroom environment.  

“I definitely learned some things about my students, being in a different atmosphere and being in a place that they were willing to share,” Baldwin said. “I had a few students open up about things that they were dealing with in their family that I don’t think I’d see in the general setting of our classroom.”

Overall, the experience with Trees of Hope was taken in well throughout the community and opened the eyes of many.

“You could remember someone with a name or you could write a positive thought,” Saunders said. “It was something that you could just react to in a positive way.”

Sophomore Noah Kinnisten can be reached at 22kinnistenno93@daretolearn.org.