White House Christmas tree has Valley roots
By JOE GRATA
For The Mon Valley Independent
Nearly 50 choice Fraser fir trees used to elaborately decorate the inside of the White House every Christmas holiday carry a Mon Valley touch.
They are grown, shaped and harvested on a Shepherdstown, W.Va., farm owned by Dan Taylor and his wife, the former Anne Imbrogno, a 1986 Belle Vernon Area High School graduate, in partnership with a friend, Bryan Holler.
This year, their 19-footer chosen for the “Grand Champion Award” by the National Christmas Tree Association is the centerpiece of the holiday display.
Standing in the Blue Room, it is blanketed in meticulously hung lights, garland and ornaments.
When members of the Taylor and Holler families delivered the prize tree to the White House last month, they accompanied a green horse-drawn wagon decorated with wreaths for the final leg of the trip.
Christmas music played in the background as First Lady Melania Trump stepped from the North Portico of the White House to greet them and pose for photos of the event, a symbolic holiday kickoff on the afternoon of Nov. 23.
“She was absolutely amazing,” Anne Taylor said of the First Lady, who wore a black-and-white checkered coat, black gloves and matching black boots.
“My daughter and I look somewhat alike, but she addressed each of us by name. “She was so gracious. She invited us to return when all of the trees were decorated,” a task overseen by the National Park Service.
That visit is scheduled next week, a tour that Dan and Anne Taylor and their two children have taken in previous years when their farm-grown trees adorned the inside of the White House.
While they’ve met Melania, they’ve yet to encounter President Donald J. Trump. They did meet President Barack Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, during a visit in his administration. Arguably more memorable as dog lovers themselves, they once walked the Obama’s shaggy-faced, Portuguese-bred dogs, Sunny and Bo, on the White House grounds, thanks to “a contact” involved with procurements from the Danny and Bryan Trees.
“My husband has done something that few others have done in their life by providing the Christmas trees for the White House for 12 years,” Taylor said. “He and his buddy Bryan, our partner, go to Colorado and New Mexico every year to select and hand-pick pine cones to get the select seeds they use to start our own trees.”
Her work in the fields is limited to mowing grass “April through November, wearing my headphones” while circling tens of thousands of trees covering 80 acres.
Besides maintaining the household, she handles all paperwork such as permits, payroll and orders for the “choose-and-cut” trees sold at their Shepherdstown farm as well as seasonal retail locations in Chevy Chase, Md., and Washington, D.C.
Dan and Bryan sell about 7,000 evergreen trees each Christmas – mostly the Fraser firs with nice symmetry and thick, short needle-like fir leaves.
“They’re not what we call ‘sissy’ trees,” Anne Taylor said with a laugh. “They have stiffer branches that hold ornaments well and a color that looks great when trimmed with lights.”
Christmas trees are in husband Dan Taylor’s blood.
Born in Bradford, Pa., the 14th of 15 children, he moved to the Sherpherdstown area after high school graduation. He and Holler took jobs on the Sundback Tree Farm, whose freshly-harvested, hand-pruned Christmas trees have been bought by such luminaries as Sen. Edward Kennedy, United National Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick and First Lady Barbara Bush.
The farm plants new trees every year to replace ones that have been cut or lost to disease, drought or deer. It takes 10 years to grow an 8-foot-tall holiday tree from seed, longer of course for the large ones.
Dan and Bryan Trees is the only farm to win four-time national Christmas Tree Association champion awards.
Taylor and Holler learned the “Sundback Way” to grow and care for the trees under owners Eric and Gloria Sundback. When the Sundbacks retired, they enabled their proteges to buy the business and run their own farm that’s now Dan and Bryan Trees.
The family-based operation has one full-time employee but about 20 seasonal employees at its two popular retail locations.
After graduating from BVA, where she was a member of the band’s color guard, and after studying two years at California University of Pennsylvania, Anne Imbrogno Taylor moved with her parents from their home on Rostraver Road. Corning Glass Co. in Charleroi transferred their jobs to a plant in Martinsburg, W.Va. She was working as a waitress when she met her future husband.
The couple has two children, daughter Abigail, 16, a high school student who makes wreaths they sell, and son Joshua, 23, who is studying for his doctoral degree in neuroscience after showing little interest in spending his life in the family tree business.
Anne Taylor has a half-dozen relatives who live in the Mon Valley, including her father, John Imbrogno, who lives in Elco. Her mother, Beatrice “Bea” Imbrogno, passed away last year.
The often-heard adage, “You can take people out of the Mon Valley but you can’t take the Mon Valley out of people” applies.
“Belle Vernon Area and the Mon Valley…They’re home to me. They’ll always be home.”
She returns for high school reunions and visits dad, but only after she first stops at Jake’s Pizza in North Belle Vernon and the Keystone Bakery store in Rostraver.
“I load up on creamsticks and cookies,” she said. “I can’t get quality like that down here.
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