The original Hope and the 3 Children in 1993.

Once upon a time, there was a huge tree, supposedly 57 years old, at the corner of my front yard.

I later learned that it actually came from three red oaks, grown together with conjoined roots. The tree offered lovely shade, but became overgrown with the passing years. I could hardly grow any flowering plants. Several attempts to trim the branches, which turned out to be quite costly, only made the tree grow more vigorously, with deep roots damaging the foundation of the house.

Constantly fighting a losing battle with oak drops and fallen leaves in the spring and fall, I finally decided to have it cut down, but left the trunk about 12 feet high, with the hope that it could be made into some kind of a sculpture. Searching for a tree artist proved almost impossible. One artist said it would require a scaffolding. I thought cutting the trunk to half its height might improve the chance of finding someone to work on it.

It took almost 3 years before I found Frank Reedy, who has a woodworking shop in Scituate that's on my way to work. He knew a Korean Tree Artist, Sang In Kim, and together they started working on the tree stump. That was October, 1993.

Working with children for most of my professional life (I'm a child psychiatrist), I wanted the sculpture to have the theme of children at play. The 3-trees-in-1 allowed the two artists to create 3 children standing, with linked arms. There was enough room to add one more figure, hence the kneeling girl with her hands clasped, depicting a Thai greeting. We eventually named her Hope, to signify optimistic anticipation, plus we are just off Hope Street.

The three standing children represented my three children, now 41, 38 and 35. They were frozen in time and would remain children, playing in a unified fashion.