Rockefeller Center Christmas tree installed

GALLERY Bill Heady, seated, and his family pose in front of the 80-foot-tall Norway Spruce    VIDEO The tree is delivered to Rockefeller Center Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The towering Norway spruce chosen as this year's Rockefeller Center Christmas tree was installed Friday in preparation for a lighting ceremony later this month in midtown Manhattan.

The 80-foot tall tree, cut down on Thursday, was donated by Bill and Frances Heady of nearby Buchanan, New York, about 35 miles north of New York City. Bill Heady planted the tree in 1950.

The couple's son, Bill Jr., and his wife, Fay, watched as a crane gingerly lifted the tree from a long, flat truck. The dangling spruce, also secured by ropes, was then turned slowly in midair from a horizontal to vertical position before being lowered into place.

In the coming weeks, the tree is to be decorated with 30,000 lights in time for a November 29 illumination ceremony.

When the tree is taken down in January, "it has a wonderful afterlife," said David Murbach, the Rockefeller Center gardens manager, who regularly scours the region for Christmas tree candidates.

He said the trunk will be sawed into beams to make horse jumps at the U.S. Equestrian Center in Gladstone, New Jersey. The branches will be ground into mulch and used to line hiking trails at area Boy Scout camps.

"We also plant a new tree in its place on the site where it was cut," Murbach told CNN.

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