February 13, 2013 THE VILLADOM TIMES IV • Page 17 George Oppenhauser of Highland Mills, New York will represent the United States at the BMW Golf Cup International Championships at the Fancourt Golf Resort in George, South Africa, March 4 through 9. Oppenhauser, who works for UPS in Mahwah, qualified by winning the United States BMW Golf Cup Final held in Pinehurst, South Carolina in October. He was eligible to compete in the national championship by winning the Ramapo College Foundation’s Golf Outing at the Tuxedo Club last July. Locally sponsored by Prestige BMW of Ramsey, the BMW Golf Cup is the world’s largest amateur golf championship. The event attracts more than 100,000 of the best amateur golfers from more than 40 countries. Congratulating Oppenhauser are Ramapo College President Peter P. Mercer; Vice President of Prestige BMW of Ramsey Chris Turner; Ramapo Foundation Chair Frances K. Hackett ‘80; George Oppenhauser of UPS, and Mahwah and Ramapo College trustee W. Peter McBride of Franklin Lakes. (Photo courtesy of Carolyn Herring.) International opportunity Kilmer poem recalled on 100th Anniversary (continued from page 5) Armour Roads,” Michelini stated in a recent e-mail about his research, adding that the poem was first published in Poetry Magazine in August 1913. According to Michelini’s research, the Kilmers bought a sundial and planned to place it on a large boulder in front of their house. That boulder remains there to this day with a 1952 memorial plaque from the Mahwah Garden Club affixed to it. Michelini learned that Kilmer’s eldest child, Kenton, said the poem was written the year after Kilmer built a home for his growing family in the fledgling Cragmere Park community. The family moved to Mahwah from New York, where Kilmer worked early in his writing career. According to Michelini, Kenton, who died in 1995, said he had a notebook in which “Trees” was written and dated. While that notebook has not been located, Michelini’s research also found that Dorothy V. Corson, author of “The Spirit of Notre Dame, History, Legends and Lore,” confirmed in an interview with Kilmer’s son that the poem was written in a little notebook and on one page the first two lines of “Trees” appear, with the date Feb. 2, 1913, and on another page, farther on in the book, the full text of the poem was written. Michelini points out that Kilmer’s son wrote the book “Memories of My Father, Joyce Kilmer.” That book states that “Trees” was written in an upstairs room that was his parents’ bedroom and also served as Kilmer’s office. In addition, Michelini found that Kilmer’s daughter, Deborah, a Benedictine nun who died in 1999, said it was also her understanding that the poem was written in Kilmer’s New Jersey home. Kilmer catapulted to international fame with “Trees,” but he was far more than a poet. In his relatively short life of 31 years, he became an accomplished literary critic and lecturer, a versatile journalist, the leading American Laureate of the Catholic Church of his generation, and a patriot in the World War of 1914-18 known as “The Great War” and later as World War I. Kilmer also wrote other poems from his Mahwah home, including one that embodied his experience of walking on Franklin Turnpike to the Erie Railroad station across the state border in Suffern, New York, to catch a train to work in the city. Those trips past an empty farmhouse led to Kilmer’s poignant poem, “The House with Nobody in It.” A few days after the United States entered World War I in April 1917, Kilmer enlisted in the New York National Guard. That year was filled with pain and joy for the Kilmers, according to Michelini. Kilmer’s youngest daughter Rose had been diagnosed with polio nine months after her 1912 birth, and she died in September 1917. Another son, Christopher, was born 12 days later. Soon afterward, Joyce departed for France as a solder. On July 30, 1918, during the second battle of the Marne in the forests of France, Kilmer led a patrol to pinpoint the location of German machine guns in the woods beside the Oureq River near the Village of Seringes, where he was struck by an enemy bullet and killed in action. Kilmer was buried in the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial, and posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French Republic. Michelini said “Trees” has been the object of claims by places across the country proudly asserting it was one of their trees that served as the poem’s inspiration. Many locations in New Jersey have been named after the poet, such as the Joyce Kilmer School on Ridge Road. Michelini emphasized, however, that none of those places actually claim the poem was written in their town and his research establishes the fact that the poem was written in Mahwah.