Driving out to Ferguson to meet with Berwick at his home, an amazing sight bursts off a weathered billboard near the Shreve exit of I-70: It's unquestionably Merferd, in a simple black-on-white-on-distressed wood. "Drive Nice," he implores passing motorists.
The piece was stirred by an incident in which one of Berwick's four daughters was the target of road rage near that exit. He took to the vacant billboard on a recent weekend, he says, to paint the message and stop something worse from happening.
Like some of Berwick's other stories, there's a sharp intensity in the way he tells it; at moments, his stories feel as if he believes that the city of St. Louis, the whole region, really, has been pushed to the brink by violence and decay. A portion of his work shouts of this sadness, like the major pieces sitting in his driveway: He imagines creating a painted piece of plywood for everyone murdered in the city, what he envisions could become an all-encompassing project.
Even though the first two pieces haven't been cleared for a public display, he can imagine them going up everywhere that violence strikes, graphic reminders of those who've passed.
When he describes ideas like this, you can imagine the younger Berwick, who moved to the area from Chicagoland in 1988 to enter a seminary, the evangelical Christian Outreach School of Ministries. It was "torched by some Satanists," he says, and he returned to the tree business, which his wife, in a dream, dubbed Living Tree. (The seminary, which is based in Hillsboro, later reopened.)
Berwick's eyes close, his voice trembles, he takes on the spirit of a charismatic preacher at moments like this. There's a mission in his voice.
"Over the years," he says over dinner, "my passion was in saving trees. But both of us really feel that the hour has come to save our city..."
"From itself," adds Gary.
"Without sounding ridiculous," Berwick adds, "we feel a call to do our part to save the city."
"Somebody's gotta do it," Gary interjects. "And I would like to be a small voice, even a large voice, in the city succeeding, in saving itself. The people, the neighborhoods, the buildings... we should love everything in our community. It's not being expressed."
At Montrey's Cigar Lounge, a comfortably desegregated, "salt and pepper" bar in the heart of Ferguson, Berwick and Gary discuss how they met. A work services company sent Gary to Berwick's company last year. With a decade of experience in the tree business and carpentry skills too, Gary, now 41, intended just to go to work for Berwick. Instead the two men became fast friends and true collaborators.
Though together every day for work (Gary is Berwick's sole employee), they socialize, too — including a Saturday night Bible study that they both attend weekly.
"We encourage each other as men," Gary says. "All men need encouragement from one another, for one another. A woman can't encourage you to do what you love the way another man can. It takes another guy, or group of guys, to say, 'That's a good thing you're doing. You should do that more.' It's about building each other up."
Their families joke about the amount of time they spend together; each adds onto the other's thoughts and ideas. While Berwick is the idea guy, Gary adds a sharp wisdom to things, filling in the gaps in Berwick's original plans.
And Berwick's plans ... well, they come in bursts of enthusiasm that are hard to exactly describe.
One example: At River Gypsy, a wood-recycling facility on the edge of northern downtown, Berwick's suddenly hit with the idea to capture video of a new, river-riding Merferd being cut out of plyboard. Pitching himself onto the street pavement, with the fluid movement of someone decades younger, Berwick not only gets the footage he needs, but does it while narrating the story about how his work's popped in recent weeks.
"I put one of the Merferd videos on Facebook," he says of a large graffiti touch-up at Grand and Gravois. "I bought $11 worth of Facebook promotion and we've gone viral." His "Merford and the Treetoons" page on Facebook has jumped in popularity, with more than 1,000 likes, most gathered over the past few weeks. Increasingly, Berwick captures the work he and Gary do on video, throwing himself to the pavement to line up a perfect shot on his iPhone.
And herein lies one of the mysteries of their mission and its future.
Berwick and Gary are doing their work in broad daylight, unabashedly showcasing the work on Facebook. They're altering pre-existing works, originally done by folks who don't always take kindly to cover-ups; now some of their own are getting bombed in return. They've been told, directly or through back channels, that putting up boards on abandoned, but owned, properties drifts them outside of the center lane of law.
And, yet ... when they're talking about what's next, it's a "when" not "if" discussion. And they're having this conversation on the record, with a reporter.
They believe too deeply in what they're doing to slow down. Why even bother to question the rules? They'd rather see things as they could be and question why not.
Of Gary, Berwick says, "It does have more impact because we're a black-and-white team. He's been a huge encouragement for me. There're times when he believes in Merferd more than me. He's multiplied the success of it. When we're talking about what's next, we have this thing we say: 'Really?' 'Seriously?'
"We need to keep doing it. I can't stop. We will change the city."
