Continuing the Walk through Sleepy Hollow

Editor’s Note: The following is the fifth in the Sleepy Hollow series. Part four can be .

Leaving the grave of Daniel Chester French and Mary French French, we proceed carefully down the steps behind us (no handrail) [Photo 1] and turn left on Upland Ave.  On our right, just before we get to the small parking lot, we see a stone tablet directing us up a steep paved path to the authors' graves on the glacial esker known as Authors Ridge. [Photo 2]

Let's climb that path with Cat's Pond -- laid out in Cleveland and Copeland's cemetery design and surveyed by Henry David Thoreau -- below us on the left.  Stop part way up the path, at the point it makes a hard right turn. 

Note the large oak tree on your left just as the path turns. Look at the ground just behind the tree and you'll see one of Concord's traditions commemorated on a very small granite stone. [Photos 3 & 4]  The stone reads: "The Echo Tree / C.C.H.S. Trumpeters / Dedicated May 2006" and depicts a high school trumpeter doing his thing.  Mr. Alfred W. Dentino, Director of Bands at Concord-Carlisle High School, explains the tradition and the stone:

"[B]ack during my high school days from 1969 to 1972, I remember that when we did the "Taps and Echo" trumpeting in Sleepy Hollow, one trumpeter ("Taps") stood down in the valley, in front of the assembled audience, and the other ("Echo") climbed the path ... and stood behind the giant oak.  The Taps player would play out directly into the crowd in full view of the spectators.  The Echo player would hide behind the oak, out of sight of the audience, and play into the swamp [Cat's Pond].  The effect is actually quite amazing...effective and ethereal.  The Taps player had it tough...standing out there right in front of the crowd.  The Echo player had it easier, out of sight, behind the tree....  Trumpet kids to this day fight to be the Echo player in Sleepy Hollow, not because it's "easier," but because it's really cool.  I don't know who started the tradition.  It was originated obviously before my time....

"During the Memorial Day and Veteran's Day observances in Sleepy Hollow, we still use the 'Echo Tree' .... A few years ago, two of my trumpeters [Mr. Condon and Mr. Wengrovitz], completely on their own, went to the town celebrations committee and the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery Committee, and petitioned to have the Echo Tree declared a historical landmark in town.  Can you imagine what they had to go through?  Sleepy Hollow Cemetery?   Authors Ridge?   Mere feet away from old Henry [David Thoreau]?  Well, to make a long story short, they succeeded."

The stone marker was dedicated on Memorial Day, 2006. The Cemetery Committee record reads: "Mr. Dentino and his predecessors would be recognized for this tradition with a stone marker, labeling the tree, the official 'Echo Tree'.... Mr. Monaghan motioned to accept Mr. Condon and Mr. Wengrovitz's request, Ms. Crane seconded, and all were in favor."

Al Dentino points out the other Taps and Echo locations in Concord: In Concord Center, the Taps player stands in front of the Town Hall, while Echo plays on the balcony in front of Holy Family Parish, blowing toward the Old Hill Burying Ground.  In St. Bernard's Cemetery, the Taps player is in front of the assembled crowd and the Echo, a short distance away, blows into the woods.  In West Concord, the Taps player stands in front of the memorial marker in Kenny Dunn Square while the Echo player, behind a car at the gas station across the street, blows directly at the brick station wall. "This is a GREAT echo location...you kind of get an echo from the echo."

Leaving the Echo Tree, we continue up the steep paved path to the top of Authors Ridge.  The first plot on our right is that of the Thoreau family.  Diagonally across on the left is Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family.  Diagonally across from Nathaniel on the right is the Alcott family.  And a couple of dozen yards farther along the ridge is the Emerson family.  Authors Ridge, indeed.  How close they all are, in death as well as in life.  What a tight little town Concord was.  And, in many ways, still is.  More about the authors in our next tale.

Harry Beyer, a licensed town guide, has lived and walked in Concord since 1966.