Vietnam Vet donates township’s official Christmas Tree

A very special tree will be used this year for the Marquette Township Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony. For the first time ever, a local resident donates his front lawn tree to be chopped down and used for the holiday celebration. But before he gets to yell timber, we were there as the tree got prepped and a few hundred pounds of snow was removed.

He doesn’t look a lot like Santa but Vietnam war veteran Ken Sahshehvich can be thanked for bringing Christmas to Marquette Township. He is donating his 30 foot, Blue Spruce Tree that he planted himself more than 20 years ago. It will be used as the official tree at the Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony that takes place every year at Westwood Mall.

Ken Ceckiewica,Vietnam Veteran who donated the tree shared these remarks, “My wife loves it, she is going to miss it more than I will but we will miss it. I’m really going to be happy and I am going to take some pictures. It will make a lot of people happy and will be beautiful sitting there at the mall all full of lights and decorations and you will be able to see it from quite a distance.

The 30 foot Spruce is the largest tree the township has ever had. Three times the size of the type of tree they usually display. So decorating it should be a fun challenge.

“We need to buy a lot more lights, like three or four times the lights we had on the other tree and we would very much like to put a star on top of it this year. We will probably have Luke come back out with the bucket truck to put the lights on top, said LeAnn Kachmarski, Marquette Township Communication Event Committee Organizer.

The official Christmas Tree lightning ceremony will take place on Tuesday December 2 at 6pm. Firetrucks, photos with Santa and lots of other merriment will be on hand to celebrate the holiday season.