Disease is evident in the cut trunks of oak trees at the Jones renovation site on East Robert Toombs Avenue. The oaks were cut on the advice of a tree expert, family members said. By KIP BURKE

news editor

James and Margaret Jones are not mean old tree killers, and are a little hurt that folks think they’ve just been butchering old oak trees on the property they bought on East Robert Toombs.

The trees were dying, Margaret says. “A lot of them are just hollow – you can see all the way up through the log.”

The Jones family, if you don’t know, are the folks from outside Washington whose every move has been a hot topic of discussion since they won fifty-odd million dollars in the lottery. The money made it impossible for James to keep his brake and muffler business, and Margaret to keep her rural postal route in Lincoln County. But now that they’re famous – even Wilkes County famous – everybody has something to say about what they’re doing with the home they’ve bought.

They’re fixing up the former Wickersham home on East Robert Toombs, next to Southern Outdoors – formerly Creel’s, formerly Leard’s – which they also bought. They didn’t realize that making repairs to the 60-year-old home would cause such a stir.

Soon after buying the home and acreage, they had a tree expert come and look at the dozen or so old oak trees around the property. “To look at them, you couldn’t tell they were in bad shape,” Margaret said. “But the tree expert said they were dying, and recommended that they come down. He said that in two to three years they’d be completely dead, and start falling on the house.”

They hated to cut the trees, but the expert convinced them. “We just did what he said.”

When the trees came down and were cut up, it became clear that many were just hollow trunks with a thin shell of live wood keeping it all upright. The entire back side was missing from the tree closest to the road. The expert was right.

But facts don’t keep folks from talking. As soon as the dying trees began to come down a few weeks ago, folks began to talk about the “horrible butchery” of trees. “People said we shouldn’t be cutting the trees, that we’re ruining the looks of the place,” Margaret said.

After a while, the talk got a little comical, she said. So many people complained about the trees to Jeff Treadwell, who owns Washington Brake and Tire across the street, that Jeff told folks that the Joneses were broke again and needed to sell the trees for pulpwood.

You might as well laugh, Margaret said. “Folks are going to talk no matter what you do.”

Margaret points out that they’ve had dozens of new trees planted all over the property, but they’re not yet as visible as the fallen giants still stacked beside the drive.

They’ve also been busy working on the home itself, with repairs throughout, aluminum siding, new electrical service, and an addition and back decks done by Frank Spradlin of Spradlin Renovations. The covered back deck has a jacuzzi and leads to the pool.

“It’ll really look nice when we get it all finished,” James said.

The Joneses will still live out in the country, though. “The house is for us, for family and friends to use, and if the Shriners want to meet here, they can,” Margaret said. “But we’ll still stay out in the country. We’re country folks.”