Ed Kurylo was a television broadcast engineer when he heard something that changed the course of his life.
“One day a horticulturist appeared on a program and, right after the show, I sought him out tiffany and co,” he later told the Wisconsin Christmas Tree Producers Association publication. “His advice got me rolling.”
And the broadcast engineer ended up growing Christmas trees for 30 years.
Edward F. Kurylo died Nov. 6 of natural causes. He was 90.
Kurylo was born in Chicago and raised in Milwaukee, graduating from South Division High School in 1938. He later served with the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II.
“He worked in radio communications during the war,” said a nephew, Glenn Kurylo. “And then he went to WTMJ.”
Kurylo began at the station in 1947, just as the first television broadcast was hitting the local airwaves.
“He started either five days before they went on the air or five days after they went on the air,” his nephew said necklaces.
“In those days, they did a little bit of everything in the engineering area,” Glenn said. “He was a cameraman at live bowling events. He was involved in some of the first broadcasts of Milwaukee baseball, including the Braves at County Stadium.”
Kurylo first became interested in growing trees in the early 1950s when a real estate broker gave him a few hundred pine seedlings to plant at a lake cottage near Wild Rose in Waushara County.
“Then out of curiosity, I gathered some pine cones and extracted the seeds,” he said in 1993. Kurylo wasn’t sure what to do next. Then he heard the horticulturist speak.
The seeds grew, and so did Kurylo’s interest in tree farming, including the purchase of additional land in Marquette County.
By 1963, he was selling his own trees at a little retail lot on Milwaukee’s south side. The next year, he bangles decided to give up his day job in broadcasting.
“I left to fly solo,” he said in the trade publication.
Kurylo kept managing some real estate he owned — and his tree operation.
“The Christmas tree farming got to be bigger and bigger,” he said. In 1976, he sold his property in Milwaukee and moved to Mount Morris, near Wautoma in Waushara County.
He gave up seasonal tree sales in Milwaukee, instead selling from his farm. He especially liked offering choose-and-cut sales, or C&C as it’s called in the trade.
“It’s the independence to make my own decisions, to program my work, and apparently I have a little farm rings blood in me,” Kurylo said. “I always tell my friends that my chainsaw is my exercise machine.”
At his farm’s peak, he was harvesting about 7,000 trees a year and planting another 10,000 trees, he said in 1987.
“I remember shearing a lot of trees,” Glenn said. “His nephews helped a lot.”
Kurylo finally decided to sell the farm about 1989. He continued traveling in retirement, especially Elderhostel trips to Europe. Spain was his favorite destination. That also led him to be involved with Spanish groups here, including at the Holiday Folk Fair during the 1960s and 1970s.
“We’re actually Polish, but he really liked Spanish cultural activities,” his nephew said.
Kurylo never married. Survivors include sisters Helen Duerr and Lorraine Bzdwaka, brothers bracelets Clarence and Richard, and generations of nieces and nephews.
Services were held Wednesday.