Mom was right: N.J. tree heads to Rockefeller Center

[November 14, 2008]  HAMILTON, N.J. (AP) -- The centerpiece of Christmas at New York's Rockefeller Center will be a tree from western New Jersey that its owners call a "miracle."

Workers cut down the 8-ton, 72-foot-tall Norway spruce at the home of the Varanyak family in Hamilton, near a tree nursery they own. It will be erected at Rockefeller Center on Friday.

Bill Varanyak tells New York's WNBC-TV the tree was planted after his parents used it as their first Christmas tree in 1931. He says it's "the miracle tree" because his late mother always said it would one day be on display at Rockefeller Center.

While the first official lighting was in 1933, the first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was put up two years earlier by workers helping to build the complex during the Depression.

[Associated Press]

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