design and plantings . Perhaps Historical Collections Curator Meg Winslow sums Janet ’ s contribution most succinctly : “ Janet gives meaning to the Cemetery .”
Janet herself is especially proud of working with representatives from the National Park Service to help complete nomination papers to designate Mount Auburn as a National Historic Landmark . That goal , achieved in 2003 , was especially sweet since , although there are many such landmarks throughout history-dense Massachusetts , most are built structures — not landscapes . In the Commonwealth , Mount Auburn joins the Boston Public Garden , Revere Beach , and Arnold Arboretum as landmark landscapes , and is one of just three cemeteries in the U . S . so honored .
Through her work , Janet has explored the lives of the residents of Mount Auburn , those famous and those known chiefly to their families . In literature she wrote for “ Long Shadows : Headline News from the 19th Century ,” a walk for the Friends of Mount Auburn held in October 2005 , she shared the stories , of , among others : Eben Horsford ( 1826-1913 ), a chemist and inventor of Rumford Baking Powder , who believed Leif Erickson discovered America and built a house near modern Fresh Pond Parkway ; merchant John Brown , killed January 13 , 1840 when the steamship Lexington exploded on Long Island Sound ; and Sarah Goodridge ( 1788- 1853 ), a miniaturist whose work won praise from Gilbert Stuart .
Because Janet actually lives in a cottage on Cemetery land , her commute involves no worries about traffic gridlock , “ just watching out for squirrels . That ’ s the nice thing about my work at Mount Auburn . There is a fairly seamless transition between what I enjoy personally and what I do to earn a living .”
What initially attracted her to Mount Auburn ? The birds . “ I was fascinated by so many of the things that fascinate any visitor — the beauty of the site , the trees , the historic monuments , the fact that you can get lost when you ’ re in the middle of a big city ,” she says . “ Except when I first came here I had my bird guide and my binoculars around my neck . I was trying to learn birds .” She loves Mount Auburn as a place of nature ,” a kind of “ wonderful botanical garden ” that is an avian hotspot .
Janet grew up in Anderson township , Ohio , near Cincinnati . Yearning for a metropolis , she left for college at the University of Chicago , majoring in chemistry before switching to earn her B . S . in psychology . “ After I graduated , I got involved in the peace and civil rights movement . I spent three years at the university hospital , working as a laboratory technician for a very wonderful biochemist who convinced me to go to graduate school ,” she remembers .
“ I know exactly where to find the first bulbs that will come up every spring , and the best spot to see the first redwing blackbird … I will miss this familiarity with the landscape .”
So she moved to Cambridge and began studying molecular biology at Harvard , in a program of the super-ambitious : “ Everyone was planning to win a Nobel Prize .” Eventually , after a self-imposed sabbatical , she became a sales representative at a commercial printing firm . She did a fair amount of business in Cambridge and points west of Boston so she could dip into Mount Auburn to bird-watch before work or at lunchtime . She soon became known to Cemetery staff , and morphed from visitor to volunteer to employee .
She became indispensable on several fronts . With every week , her knowledge about the Cemetery grew , and , in addition to transforming the interpretive programs , she became a de facto technology resource , a “ power user ,” in the terminology of the period . “ It was unusual then , in the 80 ’ s , to have an older person who actually liked to play with computers . I knew how to do things the Cemetery needed done .” She helped guide the office from relying on one or two freestanding computers to its current network with 45 users and was instrumental in refining today ’ s relational database to handle multi-faceted membership and development information and records .
When she leaves , Janet will miss “ the people I work with and the people who come here as visitors .” And she will miss the flora and fauna that first tugged her in this direction . “ For example , I know exactly where to find the first bulbs that will come up every spring , and the best spot to see the first redwing blackbird . In the fall , I know which of the hundreds of maple trees on the grounds will be the first to turn orange . I notice the rare birds and the familiar . I pay attention to what individual ones are eating — or not , especially in the winter . And I feel very protective of all of them . I will deeply miss this familiarity with the landscape .”
When Janet herself migrates back to southern Ohio , she will live in the Cape style house bought by her parents , which has stayed in the family . She will be near her brother and his young children and be an enthused aunt on hand for plays , dances , and band concerts . A non-stop reader , interested in the Civil War and genealogy , she will now research her own family : “ Part of the motivation for relocating back to Cincinnati is the opportunity to understand my family history a bit better .”
She isn ’ t planning to “ walk away from cemeteries .” of course , when she leaves New England . “ No matter where you go , you ’ re going to find burial grounds ,” she says . “ Cincinnati , which is a relatively young city compared to Boston , still has a substantial history of its own . And I ’ m very interested in a cemetery called Spring Grove , which was founded in 1845 , modeled after Mount Auburn . I actually have some ancestors buried there . So I ’ m planning to spend a fair amount of time in Cincinnati ’ s cemeteries .”
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