WESTPORT–The Westport community is invited this weekend to celebrate the life of Dick Fincher and his key role in preserving and protecting the Lillian Wadsworth Arboretum

The Westport Tree Board will hold the ceremony and unveil a rock-mounted plaque to honor Fincher at 10 a.m. Saturday at the arboretum, 2 Woodside Lane. A tour of the trails through the 12-acre open urban forest, with an account of its history, will follow the ceremony.

A longtime resident, Fincher died in October 2024. Leading the effort to restore the wild property was one of his many activities in the town.

“You name it, he was Mr. Volunteer,” said Louis Mall, a member of the Representative Town Meeting, who worked with Fincher on restoring the land and establishing the arboretum.

Having lived in many other places, Fincher made Westport his home in 1969, according to his obituary, posted by the Harding Funeral Home in November 2024.

“He immersed himself in everything Westport,” the obituary said. “In addition to Earthplace, the Lillian Wadsworth Arboretum, Staples Tuition Grants, and Christ & Holy Trinity Church, Dick could be found on the sidelines cheering Staples High School soccer games, and attending town meetings where he believed he could make a difference.”

The land that is now the arboretum was among about 75 acres donated to the town by philanthropist and artist Lillian Wadsworth, Mall said. The nature center that is now Earthplace was also created on the land donated by Wadsworth, who died in 1962.

Wadsworth intended the arboretum land for educational purposes, but that plan never materialized.

“For all those years, it was just town-owned property that was vacant, open space,” Mall said. “Dick was the neighborhood guardian of that property.”

Fincher stepped up efforts to restore it after a storm swept through around 2013, leaving branches hanging dangerously in the trees, Mall recalled.

A new tree warden, Bruce Lindsay, was hired. Fincher became chairman of the Tree Board and rejuvenated the agency. Equipment was brought in to “chew up some of the invasives,” funded with grant funds the tree warden secured, Mall said.

Volunteers – Boy Scouts and Staples High School interns and others – helped clean it up, Mall recalled.