Cathedral of the Pines

There is a little town in southwestern New Hampshire called Rindge and when it is winter the entire landscape is blanketed in a blinding sheet of pure white snow, through which the muddy hues of tree bark and fallen debris stand in dramatic contrast. In the spring the snow melts and runs off down the mountains into the plethora of lakes and streams and rivers. In the summer every inch of every hill is green and the air is rich with the aroma of sheepberry and magnolia and pine sap.

In the autumn of 1937 the Dr. and Mrs. Douglas Sloane III purchased one-hundred and twenty-eight acres of virgin land in this little hamlet. The Sloane family had four children: one girl, Margaret, and three boys: Douglas IV, John, and Sanderson. These children now had a vast expanse of beautiful New Hampshire soil upon which to build their future homes.

However, in 1938, a Category Three hurricane made landfall on the shores of Long Island, New York, tracked north-northwest across Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and dissipated over Quebec. The Sloane estate in Rindge was decimated; it took the good doctor months before he was even capable of making the trek to investigate the extent of the damage. In the fury of the wind and the driving rain, a significant portion of the older trees had fallen down, creating a scene of intense devastation. Yet among the branches strewn about the virgin ground, the soggy leaves, the tangled masses of uprooted plants, Dr. Sloane saw the Grand Monadnock Mountain, which had previously been obscured by tens of hundreds of trees. In the midst of the destruction to every side of him, he gazed in awe at both the cruelty and beauty of nature.

Only a few years after the Great New England hurricane, America entered into World War II. Like the good Americans they were, John Sloane and Sanderson Sloane enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

John, who went by Jack, flew a B-26 bomber; he performed every mission he was given with the grace and valor indicative of his strong moral character.  He would return to America at the war's end a hero.

Sanderson Sloane, too, flew a bomber—a B-17. He was a bright young man, with proud eyes and thin lips that gave him an aura of dignity in even the most humbling of circumstances. He flew well, just like his brother. His friends called him Sandy. Yet in 1944, just a few flights short of being granted home leave—leave to see his brother, his parents, his home—the Germans shot Sanderson Sloane down out of the sky.

Sandy died on German soil, in a burning metal coffin with propellers, more than three-thousand miles away from that little town in New Hampshire.

In the months after the war ended—after the Sloanes received one son but not two—the property at Rindge became host to a memorial service. The people of Rindge all came out to pay their respects to Sandy. On that mid-autumn day in 1945, as the sun passed beneath the mountains and the New England sky became a deep, romantic orange, the Sloane property was a memorial for a son lost in a senseless war.

In the years since, the Cathedral of the Pines, located off of Highway 119 in Rindge, New Hampshire, in the shadow of the Grand Monadnock Mountain, has become a memorial for every son, every daughter, who keeps Sanderson Sloane company, wherever he may be.