Every year, David Murbach, AS '84, is amazed to be at the center of one of the country's best-loved Christmas traditions. While his own personal beliefs about the holiday are a bit humbug-ish, Murbach always finds himself in the middle of the holiday frenzy as he searches the East Coast for the perfect Christmas tree. Not just any tree, mind you, but the big one--the one that's lit every November at Rockefeller Center in New York City.

"Christmas consumes my year," Murbach says. "Before one tree is even trimmed, I'm on the outlook for next year's."

Thanks to technology, that doesn't mean he trudges through forests. Instead, he uses a laptop computer and a helicopter to scout for the best and the tallest Norway spruce. Actually, he says, the best trees don't come from the woods. They come from people's yards and open spaces where they have been able to grow in full sun.

"They have to be planted trees," he says. "A tree that grows in the forest doesn't have symmetry. It hasn't had sun on all sides. I look in old neighborhoods, in old estate areas, where a tree could have been in a front yard."

And, just how does Murbach know when he's found "the" tree? It's instinct, he says. "It must be like getting married," the single Murbach muses. "You just know when it's the right one.

"It's usually a Norway spruce," he says, "because they are easy to find, they grow fast and they are in good shape when they reach the age and height we need."

That height can be anywhere from 70 to 100 feet.

Finding the perfect tree is not the only problem. There's also the task of talking owners into donating it. And, there's always the nerve-racking job of transporting a tree that may, for example, be too wide to fit through the Lincoln Tunnel.

In the 17 years he's been picking the tree, Murbach has seen it all. In 1998, when ice storms damaged many of the tallest trees on the East Coast, he found what he was looking for in Richfield, Ohio. That year's towering 73-foot, seven-ton Norway spruce belonged to Ethel and Adolph Szitar, who at first were skeptical that Murbach really was who he claimed to be. Once they agreed to donate the tree, it was trucked from Richfield to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, where it was loaded on an Antanov 124, the world's largest private cargo plane.

In 1996, Murbach snagged the prize 90-foot Norway spruce that grew in Ann Dilger's yard in Armonk, N.Y. Dilger had originally been asked to donate the tree eight years before. To get the tree out of the yard, power lines and phone lines had to be temporarily relocated, and neighbors had to cooperate.

By the time a tree is that large, owners are beginning to worry about it toppling over anyway, Murbach says, echoing the sentiments of Dilger's neighbor who told the Newark Star Ledger, "It's better to have it go where everyone can enjoy it, rather than have it fall over on one of our houses."

In 1997, a seven-ton, 74-foot tree from Stony Point, N.Y., went down the Hudson River to New York City by barge. In 1999, a 100-footer from Killingworth, Conn., had to be driven to New London and hoisted onto a ferry. Before the ferry set sail, the tree was hosed down by firetrucks to prevent salt spray from damaging its branches.

The actual tree cutting takes very little time, Murbach says. But, preparations for the sawing can take weeks. Torsillieri Brothers of Peapack-Gladstone, N.J., have handled the rigging, cutting, trucking and craning of the tree for 18 years. Crews begin binding up a tree's branches weeks before it's cut. The crane is always attached to the top of the tree early-on so that, even after a trunk has been cut-through, the tree seems to remain standing. The crane then flies the tree through the air to the waiting truck. At the truck, the tree is placed on its side, and it's not unusual to hear a loud crack as some branches are crushed under the weight.

Once the tree arrives at Rockefeller Center, it takes another two weeks to trim it with 30,000 lights. The trimming takes place inside scaffolding that is erected around the tree to protect it from onlookers until its official illumination ceremony, which annually ushers in the holiday season in New York.

The tradition of the Rockefeller Center tree is immortalized in the sentimental book and subsequent Disney movie, The Christmas Tree by Julie Salamon, illustrated by Jill Weber (Random House, 1996.) The tale of a young orphan and a small tree who grow up together on the grounds of a convent is loosely based on the 1995 tree that Murbach obtained from the Sisters of Christian Charity in Mendham, N.J.

In the book, Rockefeller Center chief gardener Jessie King, who grouses about finding the perfect tree and is described as "congenitally unsettled" seems to mirror Murbach--who once told the New York Times he remains single just so he can eat hot dogs for breakfast.

While the tree search and unveiling is time-consuming, it is not Murbach's only job as manager of the gardens division at Rockefeller Center. He also is responsible for 22 prime city acres, the design and installation of five rooftop gardens, two small parks, plantings for 19 lobbies, a three-week flower show and an ever changing display in the center's famous Channel Gardens.

As such, he has had to learn to carry, rather than wheel, lawn mowers across expensive carpets and into elevators to get to the rooftop gardens. And, he's found it best to transport topiary dinosaurs in the wee hours of the morning, before New Yorkers rush to work.

Last year, he managed all this from Harvard University, where he spent a year on a Loeb Fellowship, creating a database of information about the horticultural fabric of the historic architecture of Havana. Murbach has taken several trips to Cuba, and he muses about starting a public horticulture program there, even though on his last trip, he was arrested for taking a photo of some gardens that just happened to include an oil refinery in the background.

"It's always an adventure," he says. "Actually, my time at Harvard and in Cuba has reaffirmed my commitment to working in cities and using horticulture to bring people together."

Currently, he's managing his work at Rockefeller Center from West Palm Beach, where he has taken on a second job as executive director of the Horticultural Society of South Florida. His duties include managing the Palm Beach Tropical Flower and Garden Show in February and convincing members of the city's elite to support his 8-and-a-half-acre, non-profit garden--not a daunting task for someone who has talked people into donating their trees to Rockefeller Center for 17 years!