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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)
As soon as she got the word from Clint, Janet solicited help from 2nd vice president Keith Danskin, who soon located an ideal property at 25 Birch Street, in Cambridge. Adjacent to the offices of Sky & Telescope magazine, and still comfortably close to the Harvard College/Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatories, the building was the right size and retained the identical postal code. Clint visited the building, agreed it was the right choice, and negotiated the purchase. However, as the negotiations for the mortgage and the purchase of the property were in their final stages, a dispute broke out in the Council that threatened the entire plan. President Ernst Mayer was strongly opposed to any transaction that obligated the AAVSO to a mortgage even though Clint signed a separate contract with the AAVSO agreeing to fund the mortgage payments. Mayer refused to sign the mortgage papers at the last minute. Janet had to arrange for other officers to replace Mayer at the closing. The incident precipitated Mayer's effective resignation from the presidency; he eventually resigned from the association completely, a tragic loss of a brilliant observer. Thus the Headquarters building acquisition was not without its cost in human terms.
In the following year, Janet and an AAVSO committee dedicated the headquarters building as the Clinton B. Ford Astronomical Data and Research Center as part of the AAVSO's 75th anniversary celebration. Professional and amateur astronomers attended from all over the world. The celebration was a fitting climax to Janet's dream of over six years. The dedication speaker, Dr. Ricardo Giaconni, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, accepted this assignment because of his admiration for Janet, and the AAV SO's record of contributions to X-ray and orbiting observatory astronomy. It should be noted that the previous year, 1985, was the last year that U. S. observers contributed over half of the total observations for the year. Under Janet's leadership, the AAVSO evolved slowly into an international organization.
The following year, AAVSO members became aware of Janet's growing international stature in several ways. First, she served as one of the professional organizers of an IAU Colloquium on professional and amateur cooperation in astronomy. During that Paris meeting, the Societe Astronomique de France awarded Janet their Gold Medal for her international leadership in variable star astronomy. Janet was invited to the Leiden Observatory immediately after the Paris meeting to address the Dutch astronomical society. It was evident by 1987 that Janet was an international celebrity, at least in variable star astronomy. This soon led to an invitation from the Belgian astronomers who offered to organize the AAVSO's first international meeting in Brussels. By the time that meeting took place in 1990, the international observations amounted to two-thirds of the annual total added to the AAVSO's now truly international variable star observation database.
It was also in this period that we held our first recent joint meetings with the American Astronomical Society, first in Columbus, Ohio (1992), and then in Berkeley, California (1993). These joint meetings were scheduled to give AAVSO members convenient access to professional astronomers who were practicing CCD photometry and mark the advent of CCDs in AAVSO observing.
Fund raising continued to be a crucial issue to which Janet was forced to devote time and energy. She led a fund raising effort in the Council, published monographs as a means of promoting more gifts to the AAVSO, and even took on the Hands-On Astrophysics educational project as another way of enhancing our cash flow. Clint Ford's unfortunate death in 1992 created the prospect of an inheritance, but did not relieve the AAVSO's financial problem in the short term.
After Clint's death, one of the things that became possible, however, was that Janet was freed to initiate a detailed look at what the future held for the AAVSO-the first time such a detailed planning exercise had been undertaken on the Association's behalf. The Futures Study, in effect, marked Janet's final release from the past and turned her gaze to the enhancement of AAVSO research and services to its membership.
A mature leader (1995-2004)
The changes that Janet led in the AAVSO in her third decade as AAVSO director are more apparent and do not require much elaboration. One of the things that stands out is the extent of her maturity as a leader. She led the AAVSO in that third decade in ways that were somewhat unimaginable for anyone who had been around for the previous two decades. The AAVSO survived a period of short funds while waiting for the Ford inheritance, delayed for several years by a legal challenge to his estate. Outside recognition came to Janet through many avenues. She was elected to the board of directors of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Two prestigious awards were given to her-the Van Biesbroeck award of the American Astronomical Society (1993), and the Jackson-Gwilt medal and prize of the Royal Astronomical Society (1995).
Many changes in the AAVSO were made possible with grant funding that flowed as a result of Janet's increased stature among variable star astronomers. Consider, for example, how quickly AAVSO moved into the internet with very modern and up-to-date web-based utilities funded substantially from grants. Of course we had to have the technical horsepower on our staff in Headquarters to scale those mountains. What is amazing about all that, though, is not what skilled staff like Aaron Price can do, they work wonders. The fact is that Janet was able to employ them, and reacted quickly and support! vely to their suggestions. Our capability is enormously enhanced as a result. The pace at which Doug West was allowed and encouraged to move into Near-IR photometry is another clear example, as are the growing numbers of CCD observations in our database. Things could not have happened this quickly in earlier years; it is a clear reflection of Janet's growing maturity as a manager that they happened at all. The most amazing of all such projects is the program of chart modernization. Janet may not have been too happy with the way that successful project emerged, but by now she was wise enough not to stand in front of a train that was long overdue.
However, the best example of Janet's maturing management skills was the AAVSO involvement in high-energy astrophysics through the cataclysmic variables programs, and then through our rapid movement into the gamma-ray burster program. In a very short period of time, Janet got the grants, allocated the funds to the purchase of necessary equipment, facilitated the professional and amateur cooperation, and watched the results finally begin to flow. There is a certain comfortable irony to the fact that Janet had just come home from what had to be, for her, a very satisfying meeting. Our second high-energy astrophysics workshop with NASA and our third major international meeting, this time a "Pan-Pacific" meeting in Hawaii, occurred shortly before she learned of her illness that was ultimately fatal.
An unfinished but closed chapter
The "unfinished but closed chapter"-what do I mean by that? Well, in the final analysis, it was Janet's own insecurity that prompted her continuous striving for perfection, a striving that at times brought things nearly to a halt in headquarters because she would not allow others to complete tasks like the final editing and approval of the journal. She was never able to overcome that feeling that she had to be perfect. It was this striving that got so many good things done so well, but there is a terrible price one pays for that insecurity in the later years of life. In a very large measure, Janet's work at the AAVSO was already done; she was successful beyond anyone's prediction, including her own at the time she was employed as director.
There is still much to be done on past problems and so many new opportunities. But that is not what I mean by "the unfinished but closed chapter." If you have never experienced it, you may find it hard to imagine the tremendous satisfaction that one feels when handing over the keys to an office, and walking out for the last time, knowing that you have achieved a great deal doing the best that you could. For Janet it might not be overstating the case to say that it was the best that anyone could have done. That she was never able to step back, to retire, and be acknowledged for her achievements, to receive the final accolades for all that went into her wonderful career-that, in my humble opinion, is the real tragedy of her premature death, that she was not allowed to draw that chapter to a close herself.
It was Janet Akyuz Mattei, that charming energetic determined young Turkish girl we hired in late 1973, who put the AAVSO into high gear. No one who has ever taken a ride in a car with Janet driving could miss the metaphor involved, but what a wild and wonderful ride this past 30 years has been. May she finally rest in peace with the certain knowledge that her outstanding achievements as the leader of the AAVSO over that thirty-year period cannot and will not be forgotten.
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