Volunteers Vow to Preserve Holiday Tradition for Town on the Mend : Community: As most residents concentrate on cleaning up after the fire, organizers of the annual Christmas Tree Lane light display scurry for helpers.

ALTADENA —  Their most loyal volunteer is busy cleaning up charred landscaping and trees. Other helpers are still traumatized from last-minute escapes and nights of wondering whether their homes survived the flames.

But the hillside community of Altadena will not let the brush fire steal Christmas.

“In Altadena, we’re ready to pick up by the bootstraps and go on,” said Mike Manning, president of the Christmas Tree Lane Assn., as he surveyed the first day of work on the community’s annual Christmas lights project.

Two dozen volunteers scurried about near Santa Rosa Avenue and Altadena Drive on Saturday, untangling long strings of colored lights and hoisting them up into the deodar cedar trees that line each side of Santa Rosa for a mile.

The Altadena tradition of lighting the magnificent cedars along “Christmas Tree Lane” each December dates to 1920. And the volunteers who decorate the trees each year are not about to let disaster spoil their tradition.

“There have been only two things that stopped it: World War II and the 1973 energy crisis,” Manning said, adding that cancellation this year because of the fire was not even considered. “We have to do it, this year especially. The kids are relying on us,” he said.

Indeed, many people are. Each holiday season, about 200,000 people visit Christmas Tree Lane in their cars, turning off their headlights as they drive slowly down what looks like a fairyland of lights.

And each year, loyal volunteers come back to help create that fairyland. Christy Salinas, 11, has worked on the lane for two years with her Girl Scout troop. “It’s fun and it gives you something to do other than sitting around watching TV and playing with your Barbies,” she said.

Rosa Prima Johnson has been helping put together the Christmas Tree Lane light show for 40 years. “I’ve done every job from screwing in the light bulbs to running errands to fixing lunch for everybody,” she said. “It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. It makes you feel like you’re doing something wonderful.”

The recent fire at one point came perilously close to Christmas Tree Lane, volunteers said, and they worried that flying embers might ignite some of the 110-year-old trees that tower 100 feet over the street. Homes were evacuated only one block above the northernmost end of Christmas Tree Lane at Santa Rosa and Altadena Drive.

Fortunately for the residents, the fire did not rage any further down the hill. “If it would have gotten down here, this would have been ‘Matchstick Lane,’ ” said Jan Jouanicot, a Christmas Tree Lane committee member and resident of Santa Rosa.

One of those who lives in the hills above Christmas Tree Lane is Altadena Town Council member Craig Hall, who showed up Saturday to help weave strings of lights through the feathery branches on Santa Rosa.

Hall and his wife were evacuated on the worst night of the fires when flames began licking at the top of Lake Avenue, about 2 1/2 blocks from their home.

“It was really scary. We had to leave our property because the firefighters were afraid that the wind would shift,” Hall recalled as he hung onto one end of a string of lights and watched the other end disappear into the tree overhead.

The Halls went to stay at their daughter’s home in another part of Altadena, only to spend a sleepless night wondering if their house had been spared. It was not until the following morning that they were able to return and see that their house had survived.

Although Hall has not worked on Christmas Tree Lane before, he said he volunteered this year to help keep Altadena’s community spirit alive.

Organizers such as Jouanicot hope that others will follow Hall’s example. They worry that with so many Altadenans helping fire victims or clearing up the remains of their property, it will be difficult to recruit enough volunteers for the labor-intensive lighting effort.

“We are trying to revitalize the lane this year and we need help,” she said.

During the 73 years since Fred C. Nash--owner of Nash’s Department Store in Pasadena--first instituted the lighting of the cedars at Christmastime, community participation in the event has fluctuated. During some years, service clubs, electrical workers’ unions and Boy and Girl Scout troops did much of the work of stringing the lights. In other years, a handful of tenacious volunteers did it all by themselves.

The mile of Cedrus Deodara was planted in 1885 along what was intended to be a grand driveway for a mansion to be built by John Woodbury, one of Altadena’s earliest residents. Woodbury had fallen in love with the trees, which are native to the Himalayas, on a trip to Italy in 1883 and had brought seeds back to California.

Woodbury’s dream of a mansion in Altadena never materialized, however, and houses were later built along the street called Santa Rosa Avenue. The fast-growing trees were planted between Woodbury Road and Altadena Drive, and 115 of the original trees have survived, with 20 replacements having been planted as old ones died or became diseased.

The lighting project takes a lot of work. Each November, the 75 light bulbs per tree must be placed in their sockets and tested. Then the strings of lights must be taken from a storage container out to the lane and hoisted into place by a pulley system attached to the top of each tree. It takes three or four volunteers to string each tree.

Tom Billheimer, a tree trimmer who has worked on the Christmas project since he was a Boy Scout in the mid-1960s, usually is the one who climbs to the top of the trees if pulleys get stuck or need replacing. But this year, he is working full-time clearing burned landscaping from the area that was destroyed by the fire.

Longtime volunteers such as Billheimer said it usually takes four weekends to get all the lights strung. After the holidays, with interest lagging, it can take several months to get them taken down and packed away.

Southern California Edison Co. years ago installed power lines and switching stations in the trees and still provides the electricity for the project. But the funds for replacing bulbs and buying new strings of lights are all raised through contributions from individuals and local businesses.

In September, 1990, Christmas Tree Lane was listed on the National Registry of Historical Places. On Dec. 14, 1990, it was named State Historical Landmark No. 990, the first botanical site to be designated a state landmark.