Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Inspiring All Who Visit | Page 21

People and Happenings

Remembering

Herbert Watson Pratt
Mount Auburn Cemetery Trustee 1970-2000, Honorary Trustee 2000-2015
An ardent conservationist and lifelong birder,
Herbert Pratt had a longstanding relationship with Mount
Auburn Cemetery. His grandfather, Charles H. Watson, was
a Cemetery Trustee from 1900 to 1910. Following in these
footsteps, Herb served as a Trustee from 1970 to 2000, and
an Honorary Trustee from 2000 to 2015. He was also an
Honorary Director for Massachusetts Audubon Society. He
died on February 23, 2015, at the age of 91.
In 1938, when Herb was 15 years old, a friend told him
that Mount Auburn was a great place to go birdwatching.
In the years that followed, Herb and his birding friends
spent many hours roaming the Cemetery, learning from
renowned ornithologists and biologists such as Ludlow
Griscom and Ernst Mayr. As Laura Johnson, President
Emerita of Mass Audubon and Trustee Emerita of Mount
Auburn Cemetery, remembered, “Herb always got a chuckle
out of telling stories about sneaking into the cemetery as a
young man to get the best early morning birding—until he
was finally given a key to ѡ