On the day before Thanksgiving, Bill Edwards was walking his dog near the Gales Ferry Library in Ledyard when he saw a crew of public works employees preparing to work on the Norwegian spruce near the library’s entrance.

A photographer, Edwards passed the tree every day, and considered it one of the most important aesthetic features of the village. The spruce is one of several older spruces along Hurlbutt Road in Gales Ferry.

“It’s a big part of the character of the library … the tree was an environmental and aesthetic asset to the village,” Edwards said. “I thought they were going to decorate for Christmas.”

He was appalled to find that instead the town had plans to cut the tree down that morning.

The tree had originally been slated to be cut down when the district wanted to install solar panels, but that plan was shelved when the grant program ended, and later on the Gales Ferry Library determined that the tree was contributing to rot in the shingles on the roof of Gales Ferry Library.

Although he says he doesn’t use social media much, he wasn’t sure how much time he had, so Edwards took to Facebook to plead the case for the tree in the Ledyard Community Forum Facebook group.

“Unless it is an emergency I believe the reason needs to be presented to the District members before such action is taken,” he wrote.

The town leases the property from the Gales Ferry District; an agreement that dates back to the 1980s which was intended to maintain library services in Gales Ferry. The lease details that the town will be responsible for the interior of the Gales Ferry Library, but not the exterior or the grounds, though they had been maintaining the grounds for years.

That meant, according to Edwards, the Gales Ferry District needed to approve whether or not to cut down the tree.

Gales Ferry District Treasurer George Palmer noted that the library came to the district for permission to cut down the tree and there was no objection from the officers though no vote was taken by the district members.

Within a few hours, the post connected with over a hundred residents of Gales Ferry who expressed their support for the tree and commented on the post to “save the tree.”

“When I posted on Facebook it was an act of desperation … If people felt that the tree should stay, whether they were residents of the town or the village or whatever; whether they felt it should stay or not, they should be heard,” Edwards said. “That support was phenomenal: it was really and truly amazing.”

Posts and conversations in the forum about the tree soon led to a special meeting of the Gales Ferry district.

Forty residents attended, with several standing up to discuss the importance of the tree’s presence to the character of Gales Ferry.

“It was a good thing. I was very pleased,” Edwards said.

Palmer brought in a professional arborist who determined that the damage to the spruce was caused by the yellow-bellied sapsucker and it could be mitigated through care and trimming the tree. The members voted unanimously to trim the tree, a process that was completed last week.

Looking at the tree on a walk late Monday night, Edwards said the tree would have left a hole in the center of the village, and was pleased that the members reached a mutually agreeable solution.

“It was pretty good because we don’t get a lot of excitement around here,” he said.

n.lynch@theday.com

@_nathanlynch