History of the Pearl Harbor Tree
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established in 1934. People were still living in the area, and they were slowly making their way out. Many of them had farms where they grew crops and tended to livestock, and the Myers family was no different. Golman Myers owned a family farm in the Cades Cove area, and he started the process of moving his farm in the 1940s to Townsend since his land was in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Myers liked keeping up with current events, mostly through listening to their battery powered RCA radio. The Myers were sitting around their radio when President Franklin D. Roosevelt interrupted the program they were listening to by announcing Pearl Harbor had been attacked by Japan. Myers knew in that moment the United States was going to go to war with the rest of the world.
With the looming threat of war and his oldest sons old enough to be drafted into the war, Myers wanted a way to memorialize the soldiers who lost their lives in the Pearl Harbor attack. He went out behind his house and found a small sweet gum tree sapling, no bigger than a limb. Myers pulled up the tree from where it was growing and transplanted it out in front of his home. He then placed an old automobile rim around the sapling and said, “We will remember this forever.”
Remembering the Act
In the mid 1970s, Myers’ youngest son, Bernard, had a metal sign engraved with, “Golman Myers transplanted this tree December 7, 1941” on one side and “Pearl Harbor” on the other side. He wanted to commemorate the moment and help everyone who finds the Pearl Harbor tree in Cades Cove what it stands for. He attached the metal sign with a chain around the tree. Bernard said he just did it for his grandchildren so they could remember what their great grandfather did.
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