Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn A Modern Vision for an Historic Cemetery | Page 20

People and Happenings
On March 8, Members of Mount Auburn’s 1831 Society visited
Serpentino Stained Glass Studio to view the delicate restoration of
Bigelow Chapel's Great Rose Window. Vice President of Serpentino
Stained Glass Roberto Rosa described the careful, and often painstak-
ing process to those in attendance.
On April 4, Bill Clendaniel, the Cemetery’s President Emeritus,
Mount Auburn Cemetery Trustee Jim Levitt, also of the Lincoln
Institute of Land Policy, Cindy Brockway of Trustees of Reservations,
and Meg L. Winslow, Mount Auburn’s Curator of Historical Collec-
tions presented a program entitled Private Land at the Massachusetts
Historical Society as part of the lecture series This Land is Your Land.
On May 17, Volunteer Docent Rosemarie Smurzynski received an
award from the Watertown Historical Commission for a program
she created about Women from Watertown buried at the Cemetery.
Here she is pictured with (L–R) Jessica Bussmann, our Director
of Education & Visitor Services; Bree Harvey, Vice President of
Cemetery & Visitor Services; and her ever-supportive husband
Tom Smurzynski.
18 | Sweet Auburn
On May 31, Mount Auburn hosted the Cambridge Historical
Commission's annual Preservation Awards at Story Chapel. Thirteen
awards were presented for preservation projects throughout the city,
including one to Mount Auburn for our two-year effort to preserve
and restore our Egyptian Revival gateway and the remaining cast-iron
fence along Mount Auburn Street. Pictured above, Gus Fraser receives
the award from Vice Mayor Jan Devereux of the Cambridge City
Council, and Bruce Irving, Chair of the CHC.
On June 14, Curator Meg L. Winslow showed materials from
the Cemetery Archives to Board Chair Pat Jacoby and Trustee
Dean Hara (among others not pictured) at the 10th Annual
Cambridge Open Archives event, in which more than 15 archives
and libraries participated. For this year’s theme, “Curator’s Choice,”
Winslow selected materials pertaining to the history of Bigelow
Chapel and the crematory, and the evolution of Asa Gray Garden.
On June 23, Dances of the Spirit performed a series of mourning
dances created by Isadora Duncan in Hazel Dell.