Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn Lives of the Past Informing the Future | Page 22

Member feature:
Sally Crissman
By Anna Moir
Grants & Communications Manager
o matter how often people have visited
Mount Auburn, they continue to make new
discoveries about the people commemorated
here. Longtime Cambridge resident Sally Crissman
recalls visiting to introduce new coworkers to the
city and the Cemetery during her career teaching
at the nearby Shady Hill School, only to stumble
across her own family history: “We stopped at the
front gate and picked up a little pamphlet that listed
historically important people who were buried at
Mount Auburn Cemetery. I’m looking down the
list and I see this name Benjamin Apthorp Gould,
and I say, ‘whoa, wait a minute, that’s my ancestor!
I have his portrait in my dining room! I didn’t
know he was buried here!’ I found out where the
lot was, and called my mother and my uncle, and
they didn’t realize that their great-grandparents and
grandparents were buried here either....I have quite
a few papers, documents, historical artifacts that
my uncle in particular had collected related to that
family. And [since] I made this discovery that here
they are, I’ve done a lot more reading myself and
become much more knowledgeable.”
Sally’s relationship with Mount Auburn began
long before that family discovery. She attended
the Buckingham School in the 1940s: “[In] my
elementary years...we couldn’t wait until spring
because this wonderful science teacher would
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take us to Mount Auburn Cemetery for birdwatching.
I would ride my bike from Berkeley Street up to the
Cemetery at seven o’clock in the morning, and we would
bring breakfast in a brown paper bag...and there would
probably be five or six or seven of us who would then
spend the next couple of hours before school looking at
birds.” She grew up in a family she describes as supportive
but not particularly interested in nature: it was her time
in that science class, learning about animals both in
the classroom and outdoors at Mount Auburn, that she
credits with fostering her love of science and nature.
These interests shaped her entire career. “Ultimately, I
continued to be interested in science,” she recalls. “I
ended up majoring in science and ultimately became a
science teacher, and for over forty years I taught science
to children, and had a wonderful career.
“For almost thirty years, I taught at Shady Hill School.
In those days we had a key to the [Cemetery] gate on
Coolidge Avenue, so I could bring my students across the
road into Mount Auburn Cemetery, where we did all of
our pond water studies, our tree studies, studies of the
seasons....The Cemetery truly has shaped my life, end to end.”
Between her decades of teaching and her current role
as a senior science educator at TERC (a Cambridge-based
organization focused on improving science and math
education), she has developed a deep appreciation for the
Cemetery landscape as a natural resource in the Boston
area, both for its wildlife and for its educational value.
“It’s so important for children to have a chance to have an
encounter with those natural places, especially our city
children, who grow up pretty programmed....One of the
things I used to do when I’d bring a class over here was
to say, ok, I want you to sit with your clipboard (we used
to sit on the edges around the pond), and you can’t move
or talk or do anything for five minutes, just watch and
draw....Five minutes of silence is a long time! What they
discovered was that when they were still, and when they
were quiet, they began to see things that they didn’t see
before. And even young children appreciate that.”
Today, Sally is a member of the Friends of Mount
Auburn and continues to come to the Cemetery often,
attending programs, visiting her family lots, and
wandering the grounds. “I love hearing about how the
Cemetery is going about balancing the fact that it’s
an active cemetery and yet it’s also a bird sanctuary
and horticultural garden and a place for the public to
find peace and nature. I have great admiration for the
decision-makers here, who are seeking that sweet spot.”
After so many years of visiting, even as the landscape
continues to change and evolve, Sally’s perspective
remains that “Mount Auburn is still Mount Auburn; it’s
still beautiful, it’s still peaceful.”