A burr oak so large it takes seven people standing fingertip to fingertip to reach around its trunk, towered over its spot in Northeast Kansas City since before there was a Kansas City, or a state of Missouri, or a United States of America. Frank the Liberty Tree has served as a neighborhood focal point, a link to the past — and now, perhaps, a metaphor for the present.
Recent years have not been kind to Frank the Liberty Tree. After more than 250 years, it has to come down.
Last Saturday, neighbors came by to bid farewell to the tree, still looming over the old two-story houses on Monroe Street just north of Independence Ave…