Cherries on Chapel: 40 Years Later, an Unbroken Stretch of Blooms

The cherry trees are exploding pink along Chapel Avenue, and for the first time in four decades, there isn’t anything but cherries for a two-mile stretch.

It’s the culmination of a project begun in 1973, when Joe Zanghi led a group of Cherry Hill residents to find a way to unify the community and give the township a point of local pride.

When it began, it was part community project, part public relations campaign—Cherry Hill had gained a black eye in the national media the year before, when Edwin James Grace opened fire in an office building on Kings Highway, killing six people and himself.

In an attempt to bring together a community that even then was balkanized by major highways, Zanghi and the others worked to find what he said would be a way of proving the township’s worth.

“We thought we needed something special, something that would demand the community come together,” he said. “The real goal was to get our diverse community together and celebrate Cherry Hill.”

They settled on Chapel Avenue, which was a microcosm of Cherry Hill at the time, and brought the first Kwanzan cherry trees to a spot near what’s now Kennedy University Hospital.

Forty years later, it’s grown to 1,450 trees blazing with fist-sized bunches of blooms along the length of the avenue between Haddonfield Road and Kings Highway.

After securing the OK from the township via Mayor Chuck Cahn, the last 17 shade trees blocking the few remaining blocks came down over the last month, and Zanghi was there to see cherry trees go in their place just a week ago.

While there had been lulls in the project—most notably in the ‘90s—the Girard College alum said there was one motivating factor through those forty years.

“The answer’s simple: We hadn’t completed our goal,” Zanghi said. “This is who I am—once we started, I wasn’t going to give up on it. (Girard) instilled in us, if you start a project, you finish a project.”

But he’s also quick to point out he’s had plenty of help over the years, from the original group who started planting trees to organizations throughout the township.

“It wasn’t a one-man show here,” Zanghi said. “It was a community-wide effort.”

From the township’s firefighters, who have contributed trees and helped plant cherries over the last decade, to the American Legion Post 372, which has added flags and yellow ribbons to the trees since the September 11 attacks, turning Chapel Avenue into something of a living memorial.

There’s a twinge of disappointment when he talks about the grander plans, especially the annual Cherry Parade and its associated events, which disappeared twenty years ago, due to lack of funding and lack of support.

“All that has faded away,” Zanghi said. “It’s so sad.”

But he’s far from pessimistic. Though Zanghi said his part in the cherry tree saga is done—at 77, he said he’s slowing down—he knows the firefighters will continue planting trees, and believes there’s someone out there who will pick up the threads of the parade and find a way to bring it back, and maybe make the cherry tree project even bigger—bringing the trees to neighborhoods all over the township and bringing a common denominator to bring everyone in Cherry Hill together.

“Sooner or later, a new group of townspeople will come up and pick up on the idea,” he said. “I feel very good about that—if I’m not here, this thing’s going to continue.”

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