Janet Lehr Jackel

Janet was born on May 30, 1947, in Queens, New York. She was the first daughter of Paul and Adele Lehr. Her father was a self-trained meteorologist for the U.S. Army and the author of several educational books on weather. Her mother was a schoolteacher. When she was five years old, the family, which now included her little sister Carol, moved to Washington, D.C., and then to Champaign, Illinois; Belleville, Illinois; and ultimately to Silver Spring, Maryland where she started high school. Because the Silver Spring curriculum was more advanced than the Belleville curriculum, Janet taught herself algebra over the summer with her father's help. As a high school student, she proudly attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" Speech.

In 1965 she began her studies at Brandeis University, studying physics and math. In her freshman physics class, she met Larry, her future husband, although they did not begin dating until over a year later. On a Sunday in December in their sophomore year, Janet and Larry, both found themselves waiting in the North Quad at Brandeis for a late delivery of the Sunday New York Times. They spent the morning together and struck up a conversation and realized they were a good match for each other. They started dating and were inseparable for sixty years. In college Janet also made lifelong friends with whom she maintained strong ties.

In 1969, Janet graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University with a bachelor's degree in physics. She married Larry a month after graduation. They took a six-week road trip across the United States and Western Canada before both starting graduate school in physics at Cornell University. In Ithaca, she and Larry learned to ski and sail, which became lifetime passions they would pass on to their children and grandchildren. In addition, she and Larry spent their summers backpacking in the wilderness of the Western United States. Among the mountains they would climb together were Windom Peak in Colorado (recklessly and without proper equipment equipment) and Mt. Rainer in Washington (safely and with ice axes, ropes, crampons and professional guides).

At Cornell University she completed her Ph.D. in 1976 with the dissertation "Nonlinear Optical Spectroscopy in the Excitonic Region of Cadmium Sulfate." She then joined Bell Labs Research in Holmdel, NJ as a member of the technical staff. When she began at Bell Labs Holmdel, she was one of only two women PhDs there. Her research initially focused on the development of optical components based on lithium niobate and later expanded to complex optical communication systems.

In 1979, Janet and Larry had their first child, David, and moved into their house in Holmdel, which Janet lived in for the rest of her life. In 1982, their son Robert was born. Janet also became an aunt with the arrival of Abigail, Emily, Noah, and Adam. She was dedicated to her entire extended family.

After the breakup of the Bell System in 1984, Janet continued her work at Bellcore, later renamed Telcordia. Over the next decade she continued her work in optical communication systems, while raising her family. She taught her children to ski and sail, took them on hiking trip. She sewed them custom blankets and stuffed animals and made them wearable tails. She also traveled the world for work with Eva Vogel, her colleague and best friend.

In 1991 she was named a fellow of the Optical Society of America, "For the development of novel processing and fabrication techniques for integrated optical circuits, including the invention of the proton exchange process for fabricating waveguides in lithium niobate." In 1997, she sacrificed her fiftieth birthday so that Larry and her best friend Eva's husband Jerry Vogel could set up the sound system for her older son's band's performance at his high school gym. Around this time, she also overcame her lifetime aversion to dogs and became an enthusiastic dog mother. She created "Dog Days, A Journal of Canine News and Opinion", an annual newsletter written from the perspective of her dogs. She mailed Dog Days to her friends and continued to do this for more years than anyone expected.

She taught both her sons to cook.

In 2000, she became director of optical networking systems research at Telcordia, and from 2008 to 2011 she was chief scientist. In 2008 she was also named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers ("IEEE") for contributions to optical communications. In the early 2000s she also served a term on the Holmdel Planning Board. During these years, she also welcomed her daughters-in-law Mara and Shana into the family.

By the time she retired in 2011, Janet had been granted 21 U.S. patents and published countless papers. After her retirement, she worked with her husband in their consulting company North-C Technology, named for the dormitory at Brandeis where, so many years earlier, they realized they should date. While they maintained their consulting business, every summer for twenty years Janet and Larry sailed their boat "Applied Physics" from New Jersey to Maine, and once to Canada. On their trips they would often stop in Glen Cove and spend time with Larry’s mother, Gloria, whom Janet loved very much.

One of the consulting projects she most enjoyed was in conjunction with Professor H. Sebastian Seung of Princeton University. She converted the technical jargon of graduate students and post-docs into a form that could be readily understood by a larger audience. She enjoyed walking her dog Luke through Princeton’s campus when she met the graduate students and post-docs. This was special as it was the only time she and Larry worked together professionally.

In 2017, Janet's grandchildren Adrian and Bronwyn were born, followed by Dina in 2019 and Mirren in 2021. Janet insisted on being called "Granny" by her grandchildren, which everyone respected even if they didn't understand. Janet was a loving and engaged grandmother and shared her passions for nature and exploration with her grandchildren. Adrian enjoyed the time he spent doing the New York Times Spelling Bee puzzle with Granny. Bronwyn insists no one could make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich as well as Granny. Dina and Janet share a birthday, 72 years apart, so Janet sacrificed another birthday taking care of Adrian while Dina was being born. And Mirren never missed an opportunity to assist her grandmother in feeding the fish in the koi pond. Janet's sons see her in all her grandchildren.

During her retirement Janet took on new responsibilities in numerous environmental groups in Holmdel Township, serving on the Holmdel Green Team, the Environmental Commission, and as president of the Friends of Holmdel Open Space ("FOHOS"). She was also the unofficial eyes and ears of the Holmdel Department of Public Works for projects needed to keep Bayonet Farm in shape. Her most recent endeavor was a successful effort to preserve the Horn Antenna of Crawford Hill, with which in 1964 Bob Wilson and Arno Penzias of Bell Labs had discovered cosmic background radiation from the big bang.

Janet continued to travel Larry her whole life. Their most recent trip was to East Africa. They were getting ready to leave on a trip to Patagonia when she died.

Janet is survived by Larry, her husband of 57 years, her sons David and Robert, her daughters-in-law Shana and Mara, and her grandchildren Adrian, Bronwyn, Dina, and Mirren. She will be missed.