Photo by Jessica Stewart / St. Joseph News-Press / Purchase this photo

Jerry Gilpatrick, left, and Brad Lundy work on removing the hackberry tree from Peggy and Roger Martin’s front yard. The tree fell Tuesday morning after being weighed down with ice.

The hackberry tree at 2212 Lover’s Lane, climbing nearly four stories, offering shade during the summer and orange and yellow leaves to carpet the sidewalk during the fall, witness to generations of families, progress and life in St. Joseph, fell around 4 a.m. Tuesday morning.

Under the weight of that night’s ice storm, the old tree toppled across Lover’s Lane.

From her warm bed, Peggy Martin heard the muffled crackles and snaps. From the window of her den, she saw the tree, an icy mess of roots and mud.

Mrs. Martin stayed awake in her home, cold already from the loss of power hours before, watching as a crew from the city dragged the hulking hackberry back to her side of the street.

“I’m going to miss that tree,” said her husband, Roger, as he watched.

This wasn’t the first ice storm for the tree, which the Martins think lived here for 40 or 50 years.

In 1994, it survived the ice storm that left branches piling 3-feet high, lining the property then owned by Bob Dempster. And though more branches and limbs were lost, Mr. Dempster, vice president of Commerce Bank, said no trees were uprooted.

The hackberry, which grew between the sidewalk and the street, always threatened the curb, Mr. Dempster said. Despite that, it was “just a good tree.”

Days after this year’s storm, the tree was chopped into firewood and chunks of stumps, the sidewalk popped up from the ground and the air smelled of pine and sawdust.

“Suddenly,” Mrs. Martin said, “the whole landscape of your yard changes.”

The Martins also will lose a tall pine, a neighboring hackberry and possibly numerous elms behind their house.

Mrs. Martin, a counselor, and her husband, who works for Altec, have lived in their home since 2000. They often walk along Lover’s Lane, imagining their street’s beginnings as a tree-lined lane through farmland.

Though their minds were on the growing woodpiles in their yard, on getting back power and resuming life as normal, Mrs. Martin said she thought she’d truly notice the tree’s absence when spring arrives and everything comes alive again. She plans on saving a chunk of the trunk and making it into a coffee table. In that way, the tree will stay with her.

On Thursday, she stared at the hackberry’s splintered trunk, silently counting rings.

There were so many that she didn’t make it far.

Around her, chain saws chewed through pieces too stubborn to be hauled away, and icicles rained down, sparkling, from the branches of the trees that remained.