BETHLEHEM — As with many fatal accident sites, a memorial grew up naturally around the tree where 20-year-old Thomas Brown of Guilderland lost his life in a high-speed crash last fall. An aficionado of fast cars, Brown had, by all accounts, loved the Subaru WRX Impreza he had been alone in on a residential stretch of Bender Lane when he lost control of the car he was driving early on the morning of Nov. 19.

“The tree was decorated with memorabilia,” said his mother, April Rowley. “The kids loved going to that tree to talk to Tommy like they used to when he was alive. It was more than an accident site or a tree; it was where their best friend had left his soul.”

Officials from the town of Bethlehem removed the memorial two weeks ago, because of complaints, since Brown’s death, to police about cars “doing burnouts and drag racing” at the site, said Commander Adam N. Hornick, spokesman for the Bethlehem Police Department. A burnout means spinning a car’s wheels, as the car is kept in place, until the tires heat up and smoke.

Hornick said the culprits were a few people — not Brown’s family or close friends — who had “left a negative impact.”

There are burn marks on the road, Hornick said, and skid marks right in front of the site, he said.  Police received calls from neighbors and also from passing motorists, about people doing burnouts, drag racing, or drinking alcohol at the site before climbing back into their vehicles. It hadn’t stopped, even six months after Brown’s death, Hornick said.

“We had a complaint that two cars were driving side by side next to it, backing up on the main road to get next to it and get side by side, then what we refer to as “chirping” their tires — squealing their tires,” Hornick said. Sometimes police would receive multiple calls in one day; sometimes a couple of days would go by without any calls.

But the decision to remove the memorial was made by the town, not the police, Hornick said.

Johnny Dietz, who was Brown’s best friend, said, “I don’t want the behavior of a few people in our town who may have been friends with him to reflect on how he was. This is not how he was.” Dietz said it was “totally understandable” that area residents don’t want to be woken up in the middle of the night by revving engines or squealing tires,

“But I also don’t agree with them taking the things down off my friend’s tree,” he said.

Dietz still goes to spend time at the tree, every day since Brown died. He probably will for the rest of his life, he said. “They can’t tell me where I can and can’t go.”

He can’t not go, because he thinks about Brown every day, he said. He often goes in the middle of the night, because he can’t sleep anymore.

“I’m still really messed up,” he said about his friend’s death. “It’s hard to live.”

He described Brown as a remarkable person who, within two days of their meeting, asked Dietz to move into his family house because Dietz was getting kicked out of his. “He was just a very selfless person. He taught me a lot about life, about how to be a good person but also still have fun.”

Brown grew up in Delmar and attended Bethlehem schools. He moved with his family to Guilderland about a year before his death, after the unexpected death of his father from a heart attack.

On Nov. 19, Brown had been traveling north on Bender Lane, going home from an acquaintance’s house. Police said at the time that there was no indication drugs or alcohol were involved, but they could tell that Brown was driving significantly above the speed limit.

He crossed the road and took down a street sign before veering back across the road into the trees, where the car broke in two, the front half among the trees and the back half on the roadway.

“It was really unfortunate,” said Hornick of the conflict over the memorial, “because Thomas had such a large gathering of associates, and a lot of them were very, very respectful and there were no issues.”

His mother told The Enterprise earlier that when a car meet was organized for him on very short notice — the meet was held on the night of Nov. 19, the same day that he died — more than 300 people came, “from all over — North Carolina, New Jersey.”

Hornick has talked to Brown’s mother on several occasions “and she was very understanding,” as were his friends. “They were all great to deal with,” Hornick said, adding that police were in a difficult position and were trying to act as an intermediary between the community and Brown’s large group of friends.

Hornick said that town officials had worked with the family to try to get the memorabilia taken down, and a lot was removed by family and friends. Then, “as those complaints continued,” he said, “the town of Bethlehem used the highway department” to remove the rest. All of the items were secured and were later turned over to family or friends.

There was one occasion, at the six-month anniversary, Rowley said, when she was there with a few of Brown’s friends. “We wanted to gather and feel his energy and comfort one another.” A police officer came out to the site, and advised her that he was there only because he was required to be, but that the mourners were not doing anything wrong.

The kids visiting the site always cleaned up after themselves, Rowley said, and had a bucket there to put cigarette butts in that they would clean out every day. The complaints “forced the hand,” she said of the town supervisor, John Clarkson, who ordered the removal of everything at what had come to be known as “Tommy’s Tree.”

It was Clarkson, she said, who suggested to her the idea of setting up a memorial for her son in the town park.

Clarkson told The Enterprise, “We have a program, and it’s used, sadly, too often”: Many of the benches in Delmar’s parks are memorials to young people who have died, he said.

The supervisor said he did not think that the people who were engaging in loud or inappropriate behavior or creating a disturbance near the tree were Brown’s family or close friends.

Rowley now plans to create a memorial for her son in the town’s Elm Avenue Park, with a bench with a plaque on it and a tree planted alongside. She hopes it will be a place where his friends can go and talk to Tommy “and get his advice and just feel his presence.”

A crowdfunding campaign organized by Rowley has raised almost enough, in five days, to create a lasting memorial in the nearby park. As of late Wednesday afternoon, it was up to $1,195 of its $1,500 goal, an amount raised by 31 people in five days.

It’s a big park, and the young people will be able to have some privacy there, Rowley said.

Rowley has good days and bad, she said, “as we all do,” but she prefers not to wallow in sorrow and questions. “He wouldn’t want that for any of us,” she said.

She said that his friends weren’t just his friends — “I was their momma, and I continue to be that and talk to them often.”

She is proud that he was an organ donor.

She told The Enterprise in November that “the proudest moment of my life was when I went to the hospital that night and they told me he was an organ donor. It didn’t surprise me, but it made me so unbelievably proud, that he was 20 years old and that he thought to check that box.”

Since his death, she said, her son has “helped two people in Rochester see again.”

Dietz thinks the bench in the park will be a good alternative for a memorial, that will be away from residential areas and allow young people privacy.

Still, he prefers the tree.

“That’s where he passed, so that’s where I think I’m gonna be, more than anywhere else,” he said.