Grown and donated by a local, it’s now G.C.’s official Christmas tree

Frank Joseph Thompson, a former Glen Cove resident who now lives in Pennsylvania, remembers his late mother, Vicky Thompson, planting what is now Glen Cove’s official Christmas tree in front of the Thompsons’ George Street home.

What was then a 4-foot-tall tree, a blue spruce in front of the home that the Thompsons moved out of and the Maziejka family moved into in 2006, grew into the 30-footer that it is today. This year the Maziejkas donated the tree to the city to have it displayed in Village Square.

Decorated with strings of colorful lights, it was the center of attention at the city’s Christmas Tree Lighting last Sunday, and will brighten Village Square throughout the holiday season.

“Christmastime was her favorite time of the year,” Thompson said of his mother, who died in 2015. “Everyone in Glen Cove knows her — the whole Police Department, a lot of people know her. She would be walking down the street and people would know her. She loved Glen Cove.”

Frank asked the city to honor his mother by naming the tree after her. “She decorated it every year for Christmas,” he said. “She just loved decorating for Christmas. She made it a thing to do every year.”

Mayor Tim Tenke called it a beautiful tree, and it stood out to city employees in their search for this year’s Christmas tree. “The way it happened was kind of weird,” Tenke explained. “We were looking at other trees that people were trying to donate to Glen Cove, and one of our guys saw this one across the street, and he said, ‘I’m going to go over and ask those people.’”

But none of the Maziejkas were home. Tenke said that when they were able to get a phone number and call, Michele Maziejka was on line at Stop & Shop. “Our deputy mayor said, ‘We’d like to get your tree to be our first tree in Village Square,’” Tenke recounted.

Deputy Mayor Maureen Basdavanos called at a perfect time, said Maziejka, a mother of six and a teacher’s assistant at the Gribbin School in the Glen Cove City School District, where she has worked for 12 years. “It was getting too big, and it was starting to buckle up our sidewalk,” she said of the tree. “I said, ‘Let me talk to the kids and everything,’ and then we decided to do it.”

When the family moved into the George Street home, Maziejka said, the tree was still “a tiny little thing.” Seeing it now, fully grown and on display for the entire city, was amazing, she said, adding, “We’re so excited.”

Her family’s tree is the first to be exhibited in the newly built Village Square, in what the city is planning to make an annual tradition.