Sweet Auburn: The Magazine of the Friends of Mount Auburn President Bill Clendaniel Retires | Page 7

that resembled a dry New England streambed “empty-
ing” into a symbolic “pool” on Garden Avenue. She laid
out winding paths surfaced with pine needles throughout
the Knoll and carved individual spaces through the plant-
ings to symbolically represent archetypal views. At Spruce
Knoll cremated remains are placed directly into the earth,
without containers, and names
and dates of the deceased are
engraved on a series of granite
tablets arranged around the
site’s exterior. “I call it a bit of
New Hampshire on Mount
Auburn Street,” Bill says, “and
it’s been one of our most
popular new sites.”
Seeds of Career
Bill grew up in Woodstock,
Vermont, “in the country, away
from the village,” the only
child of outdoorsy parents
who’d met on Appalachian
Mountain Club hikes. He had
Above: Bill with his parents in
“acres and acres of fields” to
Vermont, amid the landscape that
run through, rocks to climb,
first nurtured his love of nature
steams to wade in and dam;
and history. (Clendaniel family
he recalls a wonderful sense of
collection)
freedom to roam the country-
Below: Bill was a LT (jg) on the
side.
USS Goldsborough (DDG-20),
His father was a real estate
1971
appraiser who worked for
Laurence Rockefeller for many
years when the philanthropist
was buying land and historic
properties in the region. His
mother was a professional cel-
list, who encouraged Bill to
take up the violin. “Although
our house was comfortable it
was not a distinguished piece
of architecture. But Woodstock
is filled with historic houses of
great beauty and considerable
sophistication and I’ve often
thought some of this must
have rubbed off on me,” Bill
says. “I once went to a lecture at the Radcliffe Seminars
about the distinguished designer and landscape architect
Charles Platt. The lecturer flashed a slide on the screen of a
Platt house in Woodstock, one in which I had spent a great
deal of time. So I had a background in both the natural
world and in architecture and music.”
Bill graduated from the Choate School, Williams Col-
lege (magna cum laude with a major in History), Merton
“In the landscape architecture
profession and in the cemetery
industry, we are all so grateful that
Mount Auburn was the first to
create a master plan because they
committed the leadership, time,
and energy to make it really
good. Since then I’ve done mas-
ter plans for cemeteries up and
down the East Coast and in the Midwest, and people
all know about the work we’ve done at Mount Auburn.
It has become a model for cemetery planning nationally,
the gold standard.”
— Liz Vizza, of Brookline, MA; Landscape Architect
College at Oxford University (as a Rhodes Scholar study-
ing Politics and Economics), and Harvard Law School. In
between he served for three years as an officer on a destroyer
in the Pacific during the Vietnam War. Later, at the Boston
law firm of Palmer & Dodge, Bill rotated through the vari-
ous departments, noting that none exerted a particular pull.
However, his three months of pro bono work for the Con -
servation Law Foundation resonated in compelling ways.
He found the work at once challenging and stimulating.
He then became legal counsel for the Massachusetts
Coastal Zone Management Program in the Office of the
Secretary of Environmental Affairs. The highlight of what
he calls his “short legal career” was working as part of the
team litigating on behalf of the Commonwealth of Mas-
sachusetts when it sued the Department of the Interior
and the major oil companies to prevent the sale of leases
to drill for oil on George’s Bank, one of the richest fishing
grounds on the planet. Bill remembers “sitting up all night,
working on the brief in the attorney general’s office.” After
Massachusetts won in the District and Appeals Courts, the
Federal Government and the oil companies decided not
to appeal “just as we were about to fly to Washington to
appear before the Supreme Court.” Thus the haddock and
cod prevailed over the oil derrick. (continued on page 13)
“I’ve never worked within an institution
in which all of the people were so sup-
portive of one another. Often, you walk
into some kind of internecine crossfire,
and that’s not what we found at Mount
Auburn when we worked on designing
the Preservation Services Building. In-
stead, there was an extremely convincing
kind of vitality. That’s all due to Bill’s
leadership.”
— Henry Moss, of Cambridge; Architect, Bruner/Cott
Summer 2008 | 5