"It says something about her character that we're meeting together like this three years after she passed away to complete her dream," Outdoor Circle certified arborist Kimberly Hillebrand said yesterday at the 'Aina Moana Tree Planting at Hono-lulu's Magic Island.

Snyder was a landscape and planting project manager for the Outdoor Circle, a nonprofit environmental agency that has been a force in Hawai'i since 1912.

Her dream was for the Outdoor Circle, working in partnership with the city's Division of Urban Forestry, to enhance the park with a circle of trees — a "lei of aloha" — around the perimeter.

Some of the trees were planted the year before Snyder was killed. Others were planted two months after the terrorist attacks. At that point, the plan stalled.

Then one day last year, Stan Oka, administrator of the Division of Urban Forestry, mentioned to Hillebrand that Snyder's project had never been finished.

"That was the first time I had heard of her 'lei of aloha' idea," said Hillebrand. "When I started digging around and realized what her dream was, I said, yeah, we have to finish that."

Yesterday, the tree lei was completed after about 150 volunteers, arborists, landscape architects, students and city employees added a monkeypod, seven beach heliotropes and three milo trees to 24 coconut palms that the city planted recently along the makai side of the park.

Mary Steiner, chief executive officer of The Outdoor Circle, still gets teary-eyed when speaking about her friend. She recalled Snyder as someone who was as fun as she was smart. Steiner vividly remembered how the young woman came to her attention in the mid-1990s.

"You know, Chris started out as a receptionist at the Outdoor Circle," she said. "She answered an ad in the paper. And then somehow she got really interested in the tree angle."

Eventually, Snyder became the Outdoor Circle's first-ever certified arborist. Snyder, who had once told Steiner, "Don't ever expect me to get emotional about a tree," turned into a passionate protector of them.

Snyder led campaigns to educate park visitors that dumping hot coals around the base of trees after a barbecue could be fatal to a tree. She fired off letters to the newspaper chastising people for topping off trees, which she called "the single most destructive act anyone can do to a tree other than cutting it down completely."

In September 2001 Steiner and Snyder traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the American Forestry Conference. After the conference, Steiner, who hails from New York, took Snyder on her first visit to The Big Apple.

While they were there, the two walked from one end of Central Park to the other.

"She was just completely blown away," said Steiner. "I think she was just overwhelmed. That was her dream to turn a park like Magic Island into something like Central Park."

Steiner and Snyder left the East Coast on separate planes. Steiner flew home via Minneapolis. Snyder took United Flight 93, which was commandeered by terrorists and crashed into a Pennsylvania field, killing everyone on board.

But Snyder's vision wouldn't die. Yesterday its lingering effects could be seen even as volunteers Scott and Jessica Spurrier, along with their children, Sirena Spurrier, 2, and Taylor Akimoto, 9, helped plant trees.

"The thing is, we didn't know Christine Snyder," said Jessica Spurrier, even as Sirena scooped mulch around a milo sapling with a tiny spade. "But we want people to know that her contributions continue to do so much.

"We're trying to teach our children that you can't take these things for granted — that if you want to have this kind of beauty you have to act responsibly and make your own contributions."