Frog Face Lift

The Covered Bridge. Cathedral Pines. Tim Prentice’s sculptures. These were some of the Seven Wonders of Cornwall nominated years ago by Hudson Sebranek’s third-grade class at CCS. Oh, and of course: Frog Rock.

Frog Rock is the longstanding amphibian guardian of Route 7. Its origin was finally revealed in 2006 when Marge Grusauski Wilson (HVRHS class of ‘51) came forward as the last surviving artist. Originally a black and white monster sporting a small rock hat and sticking its tongue out at passing motorists, the monster was painted as a prank by Marge, her brother, and some friends in 1948. At some point, the hat was lost and the monster evolved into a frog. And in the years since, various caretakers, mostly anonymous, kept up the frog.
Fast forward to this summer when “Covid canceled everything.” Hudson, now 14, and his parents, Ed and Martha Sebranek, hatched a plan for a potential Boy Scout community service project. The original idea was just to do some weed-whacking and touch-ups but, Ed noted, “it snowballed.”