photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

Some of the branches of Alex Van Buren's Easter egg tree on New Hampshire St. are pictured Thursday, April 6, 2023. Van Buren died earlier this month after a battle with cancer.

Though Easter Sunday was over, the trees outside an apartment building on New Hampshire Street were still adorned with dozens of colorful plastic Easter eggs on Tuesday morning.

They’ve turned into something of a memorial for Alex Van Buren, the man who hung them there. Van Buren, who died of cancer in early April, was known for putting on the festive display each year, and his friends say it was more than just a pretty decoration — it was a way to connect with people and make their day brighter.

“The egg tree, I think he just did it because he had people over,” said JG Hollowell, one of Van Buren’s close friends. “It was a reason to have people come over, to make connections … He was very big on building connections, up until the very end.”

The Journal-World was in the process of setting up an interview with Van Buren about the display until he entered hospice care in late March. Hollowell and another close friend, Zoë Johannsen, who are part of Van Buren’s “chosen family” in the area, told the Journal-World that before Van Buren’s death, he’d already been thinking about what a news story about his Easter egg trees might look like. He’d even written a headline in a journal included among his possessions: “Local boy does good.”

photo by: Zoë Johannsen

Alex Van Buren was known by friends as a creative and amiable person, who was “big on building connections.”

Hollowell said that was an apt statement to describe the effect Van Buren had on others during his life; he simply wanted to be remembered as someone who made a positive impact on the people he met.

“He wanted to make people happy,” Hollowell told the Journal-World last week. “He also wanted to stay true to who he was.”

• • •

Spreading joy and being creative were both part of who Van Buren was, and his friends say it went way beyond decorating eggs to hang on a tree.

Johannsen said she and Van Buren both loved miniatures, and that Van Buren was known for creating intricate doll clothing and furniture. They first bonded over those things about five years ago, after Johannsen graduated from the University of Kansas — Van Buren was approaching his 60s and Johannsen was in her early 20s — and they became fast friends.

Johannsen recalled that Van Buren collected Barbie dolls so that he could give them to kids who didn’t have one. She said he often would craft accessories for the dolls before gifting them to the children of his close friends and loved ones.

Yet another creative pursuit Van Buren found joy in was floral arrangements. Johannsen said Van Buren lived in Japan in the 1980s and attended a school there to become a florist. In recent years, he’d found work at the Dillon’s grocery store next door to his apartment doing just that.

“I think he really enjoyed it and it brought a lot of life back in for him during a difficult time,” Johannsen said. “I just keep thinking about these flowers bringing him back, like an analogy of growth.”

Johannsen described Van Buren as the type of person who brought out a certain “energy” in people and made even the smallest interactions memorable, even when times were tough.

“When I think of how people will remember him, my gut says they’ll remember that part, as well,” Johannsen said.

Both Johannsen and Hollowell described Van Buren as a “larger-than-life” person who had a way of disarming people and making them relax, a man who was full of warmth and charisma. Before Van Buren moved to his apartment on New Hampshire Street, he lived with Hollowell and his family for a number of years at their home near Clinton Lake, and Hollowell said he really was like a part of the family.

“He was like a brother to me, honestly, like a big brother,” Hollowell said. “… It’s one of those things where we would just sit and talk. It did not matter.”

• • •

As for the egg tree, it was a yearly tradition for Van Buren even before he came to Lawrence — one that his friends hope isn’t over yet.

The tradition started when Van Buren was living in Kansas City, Hollowell said, and the eggs are suspended from the branches with fishing line; Van Buren would poke holes through the top of an egg and feed the fishing line through, tying a knot on the inside of the egg where it wouldn’t be exposed to the elements. Then Van Buren would loop the fishing line around a branch to keep it “cinched” in place, Hollowell said.

Some of the eggs are just a solid color, but others are extravagantly bedazzled, a process that often involved participation from Van Buren’s friends and the liberal use of his hot glue gun.

Beyond just being a way to make connections with people, Hollowell said the tree could’ve been intended as a way to “shake off the winter blues” by giving passersby something unexpected to see. And Johannsen, who noted that Van Buren was a devout member of St. John the Evangelist Catholic Parish, said that the display might have also been a way to show a different, whimsical side of the holiday that wasn’t about “buttoned-up” religious formality.

One thing the tree does for sure is make an impression on those who see it, and its days of delighting passersby may not be over yet. Johannsen said last week that she’d heard that the folks managing the apartment building Van Buren lived in were planning to put the eggs back up next year as a memorial.

“I know he’d want it to keep going, and the fact that they’re willing to do that at that particular tree, that’s great,” Hollowell said.

photo by: JG Hollowell

Alex Van Buren is pictured with the decorated Easter egg tree outside his apartment building on New Hampshire St. in 2022. Van Buren died after a battle with cancer earlier this month, but not before decorating the tree again one last time.