Jane Mead VIGGIANI

VIGGIANI, Jane Mead Jane Mead Viggiani of East Haddam, CT, died after a brief illness at Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, CT. She was 85 years old. A career administrator and medical and biological research worker, she was born Jane Adams Mead in Chicago, IL, on August 23, 1924, into a family of educators and scientists. Her paternal grandfather was a high school principal in Boston. Her father, Harold Grey Mead, was a graduate of Yale University and became a metallurgical engineer and inventor. He received the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia Award for the the invention of the Immersion Thermocouple, a financial boon to the steel industry. Her brother, John, was a specialist in the development of inertial platforms. Her mother, Edna Christina Abbott, during a stay in Europe during World War I, became a student and disciple of the educational theorist Maria Montessori, as well as a financial contributor to French orphanages. The Meads met Metro stop at the Place d'Alma in Paris in 1919. A few months later, they were married at St. Thomas Church in New York. The family lived in Terre Haute, Indiana for a few years, then moved to the Philadelphia area, eventually settling in Wynnewood along the Paoli Local. Janie went to Shipley, Haverford Friends and to her mother's Montessori school, which had the first three grades, about 20 students in all. Eventually the family settled in Westchester, NY. Jane graduated from Bronxville High School and attended Smith College, majoring in zoology thinking about a medical career. She graduated in 1945. On December 8, 1945, she married her wartime sweetheart, Carl Viggiani, just back from Germany. She helped the Fulbright Program finance his doctoral studies at Harvard by working as a laboratory assistant in the Lahey Clinic. As he began teaching at Columbia, she made a familiar life choice; like many women of her generation, she would bring up a family then think about a career. In the late 40's, she became research assistant to the Harvard anthropologist Earnest Albert Hooton, who was working on relations between body types and social, cultural and racial indicators. She didn't have an outside job again until her three children were off to school in Middletown and elsewhere. Carl had been appointed to to teach at Wesleyan University in 1954. In the 70's, she began working as laboratory research assistant in the departments of Biology and later Molecular Biology, for professors Vincent Cochrane, Allan Berlind, and William Firshein. For a time she was employed by the University of Connecticut laboratory developing techniques of amniocentesis. For some years, she helped her husband with the social and cultural side of the program in Paris he had founded. Later she ran the program office for one year. During the 80's, she was also administrative assistant to the director of the Camargo Foundation, a residential fellowship program at Cassis on the Mediterranean coast of France. Her scientific background, her humanistic studies at Smith and her frequent travels combined with her natural goodness made her a firm supporter of civil rights and universal human rights. On March 28, 1963, she accepted without hesitation the invitation to join the supporters of Dr. Martin Luther King in his March on Washingtion. This spontaneous brave witness to equality and brotherhood tells you all you have to know about her humanity. Despite illness and age, she tried as in the past to remain an active and responsible citizen in her community, starting junior faculty exchanges, helping to found Friends of the local library, fundraising and organizing reunions for Smith College, participating in the election process, joining the conservation commission and more, which memory loses. She is survived by her husband, Carl A. Viggiani, Wesleyan Professor Emeritus of Romance Languages and Literatures; her daughter, Professor Frances A. Viggiani, Alfred University; her son, Carl A. Viggiani Jr. and his wife, Christiane Deschamps; her granddaughter, Rosa Viggiani Pullman; her nephews, John and Bradley Mead, and their children and grandchildren; and her cousin Edward Mead and his wife, Patricia. Another daughter, Janet Adams Viggiani (B. A. Smith College 1976, D. Ed. Harvard School of Education, 1991, J.D. Harvard Law School, 1991) predeceased her in 2002.