MEMORIAL SERVICE CELEBRATES LIFE OF MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI
Wreath Laying Ceremony at Mount Auburn Cemetery
Sunday July 18th, 2010, 12:30 P.M.
Cambridge, MA, June 25, 2010 – A commemoration of the life and legacy of author, reformer and Transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller Ossoli, takes place Sunday July 18th at Mount Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mount Auburn Street, Cambridge MA. Actors will appear in costume to pay tribute to this significant woman. The doors of Mount Auburn’s Bigelow Chapel will open for a reception at 12:30. Bree Harvey, Director of Education and Visitor Services for the cemetery, will welcome guests promptly at 1:00 P.M. Rev. Rosemarie Smurzynski will lead the Memorial Service and Eric Huenneke will provide the music. After the service, participants will walk to the Fuller family lot for a wreath-laying ceremony at 2:00 PM.
In a brief forty years, Margaret Fuller left a dramatic and lasting legacy. She died tragically when the ship carrying her, her husband, and their young son, sank off the coast of New York’s Fire Island. Though a memorial in her memory was erected in the Fuller family lot at the cemetery, historical evidence suggests that a memorial service to celebrate her life was never held. The July 18th celebration will allow people to pay a much belated tribute to this groundbreaking icon.
The actors participating in the program are as follows: Jessa Piaia as Margaret Fuller, Wendell Refior as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rob Velella as James Freeman Clarke, Dorothy Emerson as Elizabeth Peabody, Richard Smith as Henry David Thoreau, and Deborah Goss as Julia Ward Howe.
This event is part of the Bicentennial’s Conversations Series, supported by a grant from Mass Humanities and modeled after the “Conversations” Margaret Fuller offered for women (and later men) in Boston in the late 1830s and early 1840s. The event is co-sponsored by the Margaret Fuller Bicentennial Committee and the Friends of Mount Auburn and is part of a year-long series of events celebrating Margaret Fuller’s life and work. This event is FREE and open to the public.
