Fall at Birmingham-Southern is not complete without the ginkgo trees turning gold and dropping their leaves on the ground near Munger Hall and Stockham Building. It’s an iconic campus scene, yet some alumni have found a way to take that experience home.

When Professor Emeritus Dr. Bob Whetstone ’55 retired in 2001, he decided to collect a few ginkgo seedlings as a retirement gift. From his time as a student to his service as an education professor and associate dean, Whetstone remembers passing around stories about the ginkgo and seeing faculty pin the fallen leaves to their lapels.

Whetstone’s ginkgo tree stands tall at his home in Hoover, Ala.

“As a going away present, I went ahead and picked up about eight of those very smelly seeds, took them home, and planted them in pots,” Whetstone says. “I did that as a memorial of the College.”

That winter, he left the seeds out to freeze on his back porch, and all of them sprouted. Whetstone kept some for himself and his wife, Jenelle Henley Whetstone ’74, and gave one plant to each of his three children, LuAnn Whetstone Hodges ’82, Mari Whetstone Newton ’89, and Robert Denton Whetstone ’91, all graduates of the College.

After planting three trees in his yard in Hoover, Ala., and eventually having to dig up two, one ginkgo tree still stands at least 30 feet tall. Whetstone says not even the ginkgoes that line Hoover’s municipal drive are as tall as his 20-year-old offspring of our campus trees. Each of his three children also planted their seedlings, though only Newton still lives in the same home as her tree in Vestavia Hills.

These trees symbolize the impact BSC has had on Whetstone and his family over the past 70 years.

“They look ancient, but they’re actually the same age as me,” Greer Real Tirrill ’79 said about the trees, which were planted the year she was born.

The male and female ginkgo trees on campus were a gift from Mary Griffin Johns Doster ’52 in memory of Tirrill’s mother, Frances Sensabaugh Real ’55, who passed away in 1957 at the age of 23. The trees stand as a physical reminder of the legacy the family had already left – Tirrill says that, in just the 1952 Southern Accent yearbook, you can see her grandfather, Dr. Leon F. Sensabaugh, as chair of the social sciences department, her grandmother, Mary Holmes Sensabaugh, as the dean of women, and both her mother and father, Dr. Jack D. Real ’53, as students.

“The trees have become a symbol of legacy and a symbol of giving to a school that means so much to so many of us,” Tirrill said. You can hear her tell the story in this video from our 2019 Forward Ever Day.

Have you planted a seed from the BSC ginkgo trees, or know someone who has? We’d love to hear from you and find other ginkgo siblings around Birmingham. Email [email protected] with your story.