Remembering Lucas Wooster

Update: Visit Lucas’ Wooster memorial site.

Remembering Lucas Wooster from Cornell Horticulture on Vimeo.

It’s been a long week.

We lost Lucas Wooster, a dear friend and member of the greater horticulture family at Cornell, who died unexpectedly Sunday.

Lucas was finishing up his PhD. He was working on developing drought-tolerant maples that could thrive under tough urban environments. I worked most directly with him as a key person in the development of the Woody Plants Database website at Cornell. But where I really got to know him and see him at his best was in his role as a teaching assistant in the ‘Creating the Urban Eden’ course taught by Nina Bassuk and Peter Trowbridge.

The course is essentially a woody plant materials course, but oh so much more. Every year student work out a design for an area on campus and then install the planting. It’s hands-on learning at it’s best. And every spring, I’m out there with my camera trying to capture what I think is the best thing that ever came to the Cornell campus.

So I shouldn’t have been surprised that when Nina asked me to pull together some pictures of Lucas for his memorial service that I had scores of them that I really didn’t remember taking. But there he is in his element, teaching the next generation how to plant and care for trees. Lucas planting. Lucas shoveling mulch. Lucas chuckling at the students playing hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil. And the only one with the sense to drink Guiness instead of green beer on St. Patrick’s Day.

Lucas was funny. He was smart. He worked hard but never took himself or his work too seriously. We miss him terribly.

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12 thoughts on “Remembering Lucas Wooster”

  1. As one of Luke’s fraternity brothers from his undergraduate days at George Washington, I can say that over 100 men scattered across the country are shocked to learn about his untimely passing. While many of us lost touch with him in recent years, we’ll miss his dry sense of humor, his compassion for others, and his jovial nature. It fantastic to see that he touched so many lives in a positive way.

  2. What a wonderful tribute for your friend. I am sorry to hear you have lost him. So young. So energetic. So missed.

  3. This can’t be real. This is has to be a joke. I feel really bad. I didn’t even get to say good bye. How can man so great. Just go like no tomorrow.

  4. Thank you, Craig, for sharing those photos of Lucas doing what he loved. They’re hard to look at right now, but I’m so grateful to have them. If you haven’t already, you might want to visit Lucas’ Facebook page, where people have been sharing memories of him.

  5. I am in shock just hearing the news today. Lucas taught the tree class at my master gardener training in Monroe County NY in 2007. We connected as I was taking classes at FLCC in Horticulture. He and I kept in touch through email and had exchanged materials. We had planned to meet up this past spring so I could show off our local Arboretum in Rochester to him. At the last minute he had to cancel and we weren’t yet able to reschedule. I will feel the loss forever. My thoughts toall his friends and relatives.

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