BLOOMING VALLEY — For Lorraine Yuhasz, “r-h-o-d-o-d-e-n-d-r-o-n” is just another way of spelling “love.”

“Two principles have been guiding lights for me,” the long-time Blooming Valley resident noted in her submission to the Tribune’s Pay It Forward contest. “Early, as a child, it was impressed upon me that a person should leave the world a better place at the end of their lifetime than it was at the beginning of that lifetime,” she wrote. “Another guiding thought is that you should share what you can afford.”

For more than a year, she’s been following those lights with a vengeance, donating rhododendrons free of charge to the City of Meadville and also offering them for sale to the community for what she describes as “a special low price.” Funding from the Pay It Forward program would enable her to donate even more rhododendrons to beautify Meadville’s parks as well as other public property within the county.

As she sees it, the long-time Blooming Valley resident is simply carrying on a family tradition she and her late husband, George A. Yuhasz, started years ago with the opening of Yuhasz’s Blooming Valley Nurseries. At 24293 State Route 77, the nursery continues to greet travelers heading east through Blooming Valley.“George and I believed the raising and selling of trees and shrubbery was an important community work,” she wrote. “On nearly every street in Meadville are examples of George’s plantings over the years. I still have a copy of George’s first Pennsylvania nursery license; it was issued in 1935.”

Why focus on rhododendrons? Yuhasz is happy to explain: “The rhododendrons draw attention to the area with their beauty and also make Crawford County a tourist destination, which improves its economy,” she wrote.

Back in the day, however, the couple had an extremely practical reason for jumping on the rhododendron bandwagon.

When George returned after serving in the Navy during World War II, Lorraine recalled during an earlier interview with the Tribune, “we found that we had a deer problem with a lot of the evergreens. Deer don’t like rhododendrons, at least not in this area. We kind of had to go into rhododendrons in order to have anything to sell.”

Transforming Crawford County into an all-out Rhododendron Destination, however, is a plan they came up with shortly before George’s death in December 2006. Thanks in no small part to his efforts over the years, the community already had a thriving rhododendron population, she said, “so if we add to that properly, it would make a nice place to visit.”

In April 2007, Yuhasz promised to donate at least 25 rhododendron plants to the city each year for the next three years.

She’s already well ahead of schedule. During the planting season that followed, 220 rhododendron plants that had been either purchased from the nursery by individuals and companies and donated to the city or donated by the nursery outright were planted in various city parks.

Earlier this spring, Yuhasz arranged for 200 rhododendrons to be donated to the city by the R. Budd Dwyer Foundation. With funding for their planting provided by the Emmaline D. Barco Beautification Fund Trust Under Will of George J. Barco, the rhododendrons were placed along the west side of French Creek Parkway near the intersection with Baldwin Street Park Road.

“My life has been wonderful,” says Yuhasz, who’s already putting plans in place to celebrate her 90th birthday in April 2009. “The result of this project will leave our corner of the world a better place and the generosity of the nursery will make me happy. I think the people of Crawford County are welcoming this opportunity to plant beautiful, colorful, long-lasting rhododendrons,” she wrote. And in addition to making the area a pleasant, happy place to live, “this will fulfill a dream, making the area better and sharing what Yuhasz’s has an abundance of: rhododendrons.”