Preston Hollow residents can’t miss John Stack’s handiwork. For more than 20 years, he and his volunteers have been planting thousands of trees along major roads from Central to Stemmons, Northwest Highway to LBJ, and everywhere in between.

But that’s not all there is to this neighborhood conservationist. Stack devoted his life to the priesthood, taught at Jesuit High School during the 1960s, and ministered in East Africa for 10 years until he realized he wanted more out of life. He fell in love, got married, and, subsequently, was excommunicated from the Catholic Church. Despite that, Stack still leads a Sunday mass for a congregation at Vines High School in Plano that helps donate time and money to his tree-planting effort.

Have you always been a conservationist?
I’ve always been interested in that since I was a Boy Scout down at Christ the King Church in University Park. In Africa, I planted trees over there because I saw how they needed them. When I came back to Dallas, I looked around and said, ‘Hey, all these streets, they’re awful.’ I remember riding up Marsh Lane from Northwest Highway and thinking, ‘This is amazing, these islands are beautiful.’ Nothing was in them except some old hackberry trees. And I said, ‘I wonder if I could plant trees in this street.’ That must have been about ’89 or ’90. That’s how I got into it, and I can’t stop doing it. I used to water these trees out of the back of a car that I had. It was a Celebrity Chevrolet. I’ll never forget that. I had buckets in the back of that car, and I’d stop and water the trees.

What types of trees do you typically plant?
My favorite has been red oak. Secondly, I like what’s called a pistachio or a bald cypress. I have a fear. There’s this thing called oak wilt that’s killing oak trees. So I’ve been backing away from planting so many red oaks.

Did you run into any obstacles along the way?
The biggest challenge is always trying to coordinate with whatever government agency in charge of where I want to plant. We planted a lot of the streets, so I always had to go to the street department of Dallas. I would target, and say we’re going to do Hillcrest from Northwest Highway to LBJ a year from now. I would send a note and say here’s my plans, and they would not respond. Then time would get out, and I’d keep writing them letters, ‘I’m getting ready to plant. We’re planting next Sunday.’ And then I wouldn’t hear anything. So, I’d just go plant. And then about a week later, I get one of these things called a momentum, a contract between me and the city to take care of these trees. I take care of them until they’re able to survive the Texas summer without my help. That takes about four years.

As a Catholic priest, why did you decide to get married?
It came out of my experience in Africa. It was really a marvelous adventure, but there was the loneliness. And I looked around and there were a lot of priests in Africa, bishops and cardinals, who were pretty easygoing about having a common law wife or something like that. And I’m thinking, ‘Hey, you know, this is just a manmade law.’ So I came back theoretically not believing in this value. And one of the things I did when I came back was I was working with some volunteer kids, and they took me country western dancing one night. I used to go dancing sometimes seven nights a week, and that’s how I met Rosemary, when we were dancing. It just happened — I thought this is what I need to do, get married. I asked her if she could wait until I was 65. So we waited and got married on 05/05/05.

What do you enjoy most about your life today?
I love what I’m doing. I love my life. I love being married. We have a marvelous fun time together. The community we have up there at Vines High School on Sunday mornings is a marvel; it’s just really great people. And they know I’m excommunicated, and they don’t care.