Spokane native gives U.S. Capitol tree a lift

The White House has an official Christmas tree.

New Yorkers and tourists have been looking up at the Rockefeller Center tree since the holiday tradition began in 1933.

The U.S. Capitol isn’t to be outdone in the large tree department. And this year’s congressional evergreen, a 70-foot, 7,500-pound red spruce, has a Spokane connection.

One of the men who helped transport the tree was born and raised on the North Side. He’s Frank Nigro, a 48-year-old command helicopter pilot who still lives on the North Side but spends a good many days a year bouncing around in a Boeing Vertol 107-II chopper or similar models.

Nigro works for Columbia Helicopters Inc., a privately owned company from Portland. He routinely fights forest fires in the West, flies on petroleum exploration support projects in South America and other parts of the world, or conducts logging operations throughout the United States.

At the time of the lift, Nigro was working a logging project 185 miles away from the tree. He said that before he left Spokane, he was told he and another pilot would be transporting the congressional Christmas tree from George Washington-Jefferson National Forest in Highland Park, Va., to the Highland County Fairgrounds 12 miles away. The lift took place Nov. 2, two days earlier than planned due to the threat of bad weather. The job took about 40 minutes, flying at an altitude of 1,000 feet. The aircraft flew at speeds of 20 to 25 miles per hour to avoid damaging the tree.

“It was different,” said Nigro. “But it was just normal external load work, something we do all the time.”

However routine, the flight route from the forest to the fairgrounds brought hundreds of small-town Virginia residents outside to watch as the evergreen dangled from the helicopter’s hook. Nigro, who has logged more than 12,500 hours of flight time, kept an eye on the prize by looking through a bubble window of the tandem-rotor helicopter.

A 1975 graduate of North Central High School, Nigro joined the Army nine months after graduation. He was a helicopter mechanic in Germany for 2½ years, flew MedEvac at Fort Bragg, Calif., and also was in the Oregon National Guard. He was hired by the civilian company Columbia Helicopters in 1988.

The tree was taken on a tour of Virginia cities and arrived at the U.S. Capitol Nov. 29. It will be decorated with 5,000 ornaments made by Virginia schoolchildren and 10,000 lights.