When 95-year-old Alice Wright planted a young live oak in front of her home in Houston 50 years ago, nursing the feeble sapling into a towering tree, she had expected perhaps only to be rewarded with the coolness of its shade against the scorching Texas sun. Little could she have known then, however, that half-a-century later that mighty oak would actually play a critical role in saving her life. Early this morning, Mrs. Wright was sound asleep when the driver of an 18-wheeler suffered a heart attack and lost control on the freeway in front of her home, sending the multi-ton 18 wheeler careening off the road on a collision course with her house. But as fate would have it, the tree she had planted years earlier was there to stop it, just a few feet from her bedroom window Woman's Life Saved By a Tree She Planted 50 Years Ago : TreeHugger
