Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn In Celebration of 175 Years | Page 15

Consecration Day
More than three hundred people filled a tent erected on Bigelow Chapel
Lawn on September 24, 2006, to mark the 175th Anniversary of the
consecration ceremony that officially opened Mount Auburn Cemetery. A
warm wind coursed through the scene as the soft plopping of acorns drop-
ping from the oaks above sounded on the tent’s roof and Harvard Chap-
lain Rev. Peter Gomes praised Mount Auburn as a treasured sacred space
and an enduring and vital Boston institution, a theme re-enforced by the
other guest speakers: clockwise at lower right, Secretary of the Commonwealth
William Galvin; Bill Clendaniel; President of the Boston Foundation Paul
Grogan; poet Celia Gilbert; and Rev. Peter Gomes. A 1938 hearse—com-
plete with running boards and whitewall tires—was on
hand (upper right), as were an enthused and festive brass
ensemble from the New England Conservatory (upper left,
in front of Bigelow Chapel). Refreshments were provided
courtesy of Whole Foods, River Street, Cambridge. Four-
teen Trustees and former Trustees were on hand for the
celebration. One Trustee of
the Cemetery summed up
the day as, “Perfect, abso-
lutely perfect.”
PHOTOs left and