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Every holiday season, a single tree floats on Lake Morton. Its white lights shimmer on the water, creating a scene locals have loved for nearly 100 years.
It looks peaceful now. But the first lighting attempt in 1932 ended with hand-painted light bulbs exploding one by one, the tree bursting into flames, and the entire south side of Lakeland going dark.
A troop’s bright idea
In 1929, a 12-year-old Wilfred “Willy” Wolfson joined Boy Scout Troop 4 under Rev. Charles Raymond, then the pastor of First Presbyterian Church and the troop’s scoutmaster, according to a 2012 interview with Wolfson.
The troop was sponsored by the Lakeland Rotary Club. A little over a year later, at 14, Wolfson became an Eagle Scout — the youngest in Florida at the time. He and his brothers, Jack and Herbert, also made history as the first family in the state to all earn Eagle Scout rank.
Shortly after Wolfson joined, Rev. Raymond proposed an idea: What if they put a Christmas tree on a raft in the middle of Lake Morton so everyone could enjoy it?
The first attempt goes sideways
The Scouts cut down a 30-foot shortleaf pine and built a raft. They decorated it with moss stuffed in flour sacks and began towing it out to the middle of the lake.
The raft capsized.
After getting it back up and drying it out, the Scouts added some ballast cans and tried again. They anchored the tree using an old Model T Ford chassis. When the sun hit the tree just right, it created a beautiful reflection on the water.
“That’s the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen out in the middle of the lake,” Wolfson said. “It had never been done before that I know of.” Locals began stopping their cars to admire it. A tradition was born, but they weren’t done tinkering.
The following year, the troop tried again, this time covering the tree with flour sacks painted bright colors and stuffed with moss. While it looked beautiful in the day, the tree disappeared at night.
The night south Lakeland went dark
In 1932, after about two years of the tree floating on the lake, Rev. Raymond had another idea: the tree needed lights.
“We all went home and got all the light bulbs we could find,” Wolfson told The Ledger in 2007. The Scouts collected bulbs of every size and wattage they could find. Since colored bulbs weren’t available in those days, they hand-painted clear ones and hung at least 100 bulbs on the 35-foot tree, along with moss decorations.
The Scouts swam the decorated tree out to the middle of the lake. A wire ran from the Boy Scout hut across the water to the tree, according to Wolfson’s 2012 account. That night, a lighting ceremony was planned.
City commissioners, the Rotary Club, parents and many other spectators gathered on the bank. Rev. Raymond said a few words, holding the two wires in his hands. Then he connected them to light the tree.
The tree lit beautifully.
Then the lights started exploding. “What you don’t realize is that a light bulb, when it gets hot, has to expand. But if it’s covered with paint, it can’t expand … it explodes,” Wolfson recalled.
The exploding bulbs caught the tree on fire. People came running out of their houses. Then the fire shorted out the transformer for South Lakeland.
“It was the greatest fireworks display Lakeland had ever seen,” Wolfson said. “And all of South Lakeland went dark.”
Wolfson thought they were all going to jail, but Rev. Raymond talked them out of the trouble.
A tradition that evolved
Despite the disaster, the Scouts continued the tradition every year after that. Over time, the community refined the display. The real pine eventually gave way to a garland tree maintained by Lakeland’s Parks and Recreation Department that floats safely on Lake Morton today.
Wolfson, who went on to open three Wolfson Pharmacy stores in Lakeland in the 1950s, never forgot the tree.
Growing up on Success Avenue by Lake Morton, Wolfson had fond memories of swimming in the lake and climbing trees around his home. The story of the pine tree remained one of his favorites.
“Just being around Lake Morton and seeing the tree brings back memories,” Wolfson said in his 2007 interview with The Ledger.
Wilfred Wolfson died peacefully on December 31, 2011, at his Lakeland home surrounded by family. He was 94.
And the tradition that he helped start floats on.
From the capsized raft to the exploding bulbs, each mishap is part of the story that makes it uniquely Lakeland’s.
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