`A Little Snow Will Be Picturesque’
By Mary Frost
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY, BROOKLYN — The absolutely coldest spot in Brooklyn is Battle Hill, the highest point in the borough, which catches the icy winds blowing off the waterfront.
It’s also the site of Green-Wood Cemetery’s historic Civil War Monument, and it was there, at about 10:30 a.m. Thursday, where 40 students from Park Slope’s P.S. 39 – clutching notebooks and pencils – were standing when the first ice storm of the season blew into town.
The field trip to Green-Wood, part of the fifth-grader’s Civil War studies, started out with grand expectations. The relentlessly enthusiastic manager of school programs for Green-Wood, Steven Estroff, arranged to pick up the students right at the school’s front door with the new Green-Wood Trolley, and the kids were buzzing with excitement.
“A little snow will be picturesque,” said Donna Baker, administrative assistant at P.S. 39, who is helping the school develop an educational partnership with the historic cemetery.
“I’m so jealous,” said Principal Anita DePaz. “I wish I was coming.”
But almost from the moment the students alighted from the trolley, nature bared her claws. Stinging hail pelted their faces as they tried to spy the monk parrots nesting in the cemetery’s glorious arch. Freezing bits of ice melted on their notebooks as they tried to write the names of some of the famous people interred in the cemetery – Leonard Bernstein, Charles Ebbets, Peter Cooper.
Estroff, once a middle school teacher, had planned to talk to the students about the Civil War heroes buried at Green-Wood – heroes like Clarence D. McKenzie, a drummer boy who died at the age of 12 in Annapolis. “It’s about making it relevant,” he said. “To teach history, but evoke humanity.” He was also going to open up the kids’ eyes to the beauty of Green-Wood, to the symbolism there: the upside-down torches, the stained glass, the poetry.
But as hail continued to coat the children, an executive decision was made to skip the poetry and go straight to Battle Hill. And so it was that Estroff, two classes, teachers Chris Rochford and Rebecca Herbert, a couple of parents and one reporter found themselves at the coldest spot in Brooklyn just as the hail grew to the size of BBs and a vicious wind tore in from the waterfront. Estroff handed out a few umbrellas he had stocked up on the day before and gamely plowed on.
“One out of every five New Yorkers fought in the Civil War,” Estroff told the kids as they huddled around the Civil War Monument’s four statues. “This one’s an engineer. Why do you think he’s holding an ax?”
“To build things?”
“That’s right; to cut down trees and build bridges.”
As the hail continued to bounce off the children and the reporter’s fingers lost all sensation, teacher Rochford made another executive decision. “We have to get out of here,” he said. “It’s too cold.”
Back in the trolley, Estroff pointed out monuments of interest as the driver slowly drove up and down the ice-slicked hills. “There’s the grave of Henry Bergh, founder of the ASPCA. Back then they thought he was a kook because he cared about animals.”
“Can the trolley roll off the hill?” one boy asked no one in particular.
“See that impressive monument?” Estroff said. “It wasn’t Nathan who invented the hot dog. It was Charles Feltman. He did pretty good with hot dogs.”
Soon after the Feltman monument, the trolley started to slide backwards. A couple of the children started yelling but teacher Herbert hushed them. “The driver has to concentrate,” she said.
The driver slipped off the brake and tried again to make it to the top of the hill, but once again the trolley started sliding backwards.
“Everybody out. Bring your lunches, your hats, everything,” the teachers commanded. Estroff explained that it was a 15-minute walk to Green-Wood’s chapel, where it was warm and there were bathrooms. “You can eat you lunch there,” he added.
“Yay!” the kids said, sensing a positive outcome to the ill-fated trip.
The trolley driver was left on the hill to deal with the problem, and along the way the hail changed to rain. Some members of the party seemed to be losing their sense of humor. But Estroff was still upbeat. “I have a secret,” he said. “There’s hot chocolate in the chapel.”
The soggy group made it to the chapel intact, though one child had forgotten his inhaler and was beginning to tire. The chapel was, as promised, warm and with bathrooms. The kids threw themselves into their lunch and perked up considerably at the sight of the waiting warm drink and cookies. The trolley miraculously showed up, in one piece.
Estroff told the group, “You guys are all invited to come back on another day – maybe in the spring.”
“This trip’s a disaster,” one boy said.
But Samuel Sewell, age 10, said he would remember a few positive things. “I’ll remember the Civil War Monument and some of the crazy names they put on the monuments – like Wilbur Duff,” he said.
Tyler Centeno said that he enjoyed seeing the monument to the “Father of Baseball” because “I’m on the Brooklyn Tianes,” a Camp Friendship team.
Hunter Rios liked the statue of the engineer at the Civil War Monument “because he does a lot of the work – builds houses, cuts down trees.”
And Amanda Corredor was happy to visit Green-Wood, in spite of the weather, “because my uncle’s buried here.”
© Brooklyn Daily Eagle 2007
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