Reminiscences of Janet A. Mattei, former director of the American Associations of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)

I will never forget sitting for a few minutes in the dark on a bench in the Maria Mitchell Observatory having a pleasant discussion with a charming young Turkish girl about her experiences in the United States up to that time in 1969. However, when I learned a few years later this same young girl was replacing Margaret Mayall as the AAVSO Director, my first reaction was one of stunned surprise, in fact dismay. Janet was fairly invisible to me as a rank and file member during her first five years. Thus, at the time I was first elected to the AAVSO Council in 1978, I was somewhat negative about her as the AAVSO Director. My attitude would soon change.

I have had to rely on others to tell me about that first five to eight years of Janet's tenure as the Director. I am grateful to Janet's close personal friends and confidants, Dorrit Hoffleit and Martha Hazen, and to Charles Scovil, George Fortier, and Marv Baldwin, the first three AAVSO presidents that Janet worked with as director, and to John Bortle, an outstanding observer, all of whom generously shared time and their thoughts with me.

Anyone who has had the unique experience of taking over command in any organization, large or small, can likely imagine the feelings that Janet must have had on the first day after she took control of the keys to the office at 187 Concord Avenue in Cambridge. She had worked in the AAVSO office for less than a year. Of the individuals she knew there, only Margaret Mayall and Dorrit Hoffleit could have seemed like friends that she could rely on for help. That thought no doubt gave Janet an uneasy feeling. Furthermore, the way things ran then, as now, the AAVSO's officers did not spend a lot of time helping the director with her work. Furthermore, interest in variable stars was increasing both among observers and among the professionals, so both the observations from amateurs and the questions from professionals were coming in faster than ever.

Those first few years must have seemed like a nightmare for Janet. During the day she was in the office responding to calls, answering questions, and plotting data by hand. In the late 1960s, Margaret initiated coding of all current observations on punched cards but the work was going slowly and made no real contribution to the daily work in the office. Indeed, Margaret had continued to plot all incoming observations manually, with a pencil on paper, so she could respond to questions that arose about specific AAVSO program stars, mainly the long period variables. Janet attempted to follow in Margaret's footsteps in this way, but she also spent many nights at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) computing center attempting to debug programs to plot the punched card data as light curves.

If Janet had any reservations about how to perform her job, it was not evident from the way she handled things from the start. In a 1975 letter to Marv Baldwin, Janet opened with a very cordial introduction and her thanks for all past efforts, a few other pleasantries, and then urged Marv to get things done "with a lot of hard nosed arm twisting." Marv characterized this as typical of Janet's style for the rest of her career.

Following in Margaret MayalPs footsteps was not made easier by the fact that a transition from the Old Guard to a new order in the AAVSO was increasingly being demanded by some members. An example of this pressure, which had arisen well before Margaret retired, can be seen in the movement for increased member communications that was in progress as Janet became director. An informal newsletter, Variable Views, published by AAVSO member Carolyn Hurless from her Lima, Ohio home, was very successful in promoting communication among some members but was completely outside headquarters control and not always appreciated there. An aggressive group of members-the "Fairfield Four": Clint Ford, Charles Scovil, John Bortle, and Wayne Lowder-decided that the AAVSO needed several new types of more formal communication with its members. They undertook two new publications-The Journal of the AAVSO (JAAVSO), and the AA VSO Circular-both of which were edited, printed, and distributed from the Stamford Observatory in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Thus, neither Margaret, nor Janet as her successor, had complete control over the content of these off-site publications, though both reserved the right to review any publication that bore the AAVSO logo.

The Journal of the AAVSO (JAAVSO), edited initially by William and Florence Glenn, did fill a very real need. However, as a technical journal claiming to represent the Association to the variable star community around the world it was a constant source of concern for Janet. The AAVSO Circular edited by John Bortle was welcomed for its monthly feedback by many members who were interested in cataclysmic and irregular variables, but the problems for headquarters were the same.

When the Glenns resigned as editors of the JAAVSO in 1974, Janet had her first opportunity to begin dealing constructively with the problem created by these initiatives. After the AAVSO Council appointed Charles Whitney to the journal editorship, Janet began gradually to move activities related to the journal into headquarters. Production of the first JAAVSO issues at headquarters in Cambridge took place in 1975, and has been handled there since. Janet used the opportunity to replace the JAAVSO editor successfully to begin the major changes needed in headquarters staffing and organization, a process that continued throughout her tenure as director.

The "Fairfield Four" were also responsible for initiating the preparation of the AAVSO Variable Star Atlas, a project that was sorely needed, but again outside the ability of the limited headquarters staff to monitor or manage. In addition, the atlas project precipitated another crisis when AAVSO Treasurer Richard Davis resigned in a mid-term dispute involving handling of the Atlas. His resignation created a vacuum that Newton May all filled for a few years. However, Newton over-supervised Janet, stretching their relationship to the breaking point. Janet handled this effectively by recruiting Ted Wales as Treasurer.

The main point I want to leave you with here is that there was an enormous amount of turmoil under the placid surface that was the public face of the AAVSO in those days. The ever-smiling, charming young Turkish girl turned out to be just as tough and politically savvy as anyone involved, and she needed to be just that.

After 1 was elected to the AAVSO Council in 1978 and started learning what the Director's job was all about, I came to value Janet's contributions to the organization ever more highly. I will never forget the trip from The Espousal Conference Center in Waltham, Massachusetts, to Logan airport after the 1980 Fall Meeting. lt was my first ride in a car with Janet driving, and a hair-raising experience is the only way to characterize it. On that wild ride I first learned to appreciate Janet's concerns for the future, her desire to make the AAVSO her career, and her uncertainty about whether AAVSO would work to keep her. She expressed her concerns about the need for a permanent and much larger headquarters. She was already planning for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the AAVSO, an event that was still five years away, and hoped to have headquarters settled in a new building before then. This was, to say the least, an ambitious and challenging goal for someone with her limited experience-entirely characteristic of Janet.

Janet also faced some fairly intimidating technical challenges as well as the early administrative and political problems. One type of request from professional astronomers for technical support seemed to her to offer exceptional opportunities, coordinating observing programs with orbiting observatories. Professional astronomers managing orbiting observatories needed both predictions of events in cataclysmic variables (CVs) and real-time alerts when a brightening did occur. With some help from John Bortle, Janet quickly became skilled in predicting eruptions. By recruiting observers to provide real-time alerts and by making herself available to receive their notification calls at all hours of the day and night, Janet fashioned an active support program that continues to function well to this day. Her success in this program was largely responsible for the increased awareness and acceptance of the AAVSO within the professional community that we now enjoy. France Cordova announced to the world at the 1979 AAVSO annual meeting that an SS Cygni maximum that had been predicted by Janet, and then detected by AAVSO observers, had been observed in X-rays-the first time the observation of X-rays coincided with a transient event in a visually observed astronomical object. No one who was present will likely forget the electrifying excitement felt by proud AAVSO members, most of all by Janet, when that announcement was made.

AAVSO Headquarters continued to process current monthly observations, and to enter all the backlogged observations. The project experienced short term but frustrating delays with new computer programs and data entry technology. Progress was slow and the work was tedious. It would be difficult to over-estimate the frustrations that Janet felt most of the time. Progress was being made nearly continuously, but not fast enough to satisfy some members. Even more frustrating must have been the routine and crushing expectations from some members that nothing would change from the way that the AAVSO had always been under two prior directors. That expectation could be seen in constant demands that the next edition of the long period variables report be published while Janet was still struggling with the detailed editing of the data and with automatic plotting of the long period light curves.

As Janet became more successful with the data management programs, boxes of computer cards piled up in the office. Stacks of boxes served as partitions, supported impromptu tables, blocked daylight from coming through the windows and gathered dust. Then, just before the Spring meeting in 1984, a fire broke out in the apartment over the AAVSO office at 187 Concord Avenue. Fortunately for the AAVSO, there was no damage downstairs, but the event served as a wake-up call for the Council as it met in Ames, Iowa, that spring. When the Council realized that its most precious assets were thousands of pieces of paper that were decaying in wooden filing cabinets and thousands of boxes containing punched paper cards, it was clear that would have to move to a more secure location to preserve those assets. At the same time the Council decided to accelerate the magnetization of the data contained on all that paper so it could be duplicated and preserved. This plunged the staff into a long campaign to upgrade computer systems to bring all data processing and plotting into headquarters to support the accelerated program, and employment of additional staff in offices that were already overcrowded. The goal, to complete the data entry and validation of all the archived data (1911-1967), seemed achievable in a short period given this renewed commitment of resources.

With some coaching from Janet, Clint Ford gave the word that a search for new quarters should proceed on the basis of finding a permanent headquarters building that he would purchase and donate to the Association. At that point Janet was leading the organization across an important bridge in its history as well as in her own.

Freed from the past? (1985-1994)