Astronomer, philanthropist Jaylee Mead dies at 83

WASHINGTON -- Jaylee Mead, a NASA astronomer who married into a paper manufacturing fortune and with her husband, Gilbert, helped transform Washington's cultural scene by donating more than $50 million to local theaters, died Sept. 14 at her home in Washington. She was 83.

Her death, from congestive heart failure, was confirmed by her sister Mary Watts.

For decades, Gilbert and Jaylee Mead lived in Greenbelt, Md., and worked in relative obscurity at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, he as a geophysicist and she as an astronomer. They came, in some ways, from different universes.

Gilbert was an heir to the riches of Consolidated Papers in Wisconsin -- one of the largest papermakers in North America -- while Jaylee was the daughter of a general store owner in rural North Carolina.

The two scientists met through an amateur Broadway troupe for Goddard employees, found a kinship in their love of the theater and married in 1968. In the late 1980s, after years of quiet patronage of local playhouses, the Meads established themselves as two of the most generous arts philanthropists in the capital.

"It's just like in 'Hello, Dolly!'," Jaylee Mead once told The Washington Post. "Money should be spread around, like manure. Dolly Levi says that, and I really believe it." Gilbert Mead died in 2007, three years before the opening of the couple's most dramatic project: the fully renovated Arena Stage in Washington, renamed the Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater in recognition of the couple's $35 million in gifts and matching pledges.

Barbara Jaylee Montague was born June 14, 1929, near Clayton, N.C.

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Mead worked at Goddard for 33 years as a mathematician and astronomer, retiring in 1992. She helped create a computerized database of stars and galaxies, a tool used by astronomers seeking to identify new celestial bodies. Mead credited Goddard's theater group with sparking her interest in the arts.

She and her husband received numerous honors, included one from The Washington Post for distinguished community service in 1996.

Her first marriage, to Gordon Burley, ended in divorce. In addition to her sister, survivors include three stepchildren, Betsy Mead of Silver Spring, Md., Diana Mead of Chapel Hill, N.C., and Stanton W. Mead II of Middletown, Md.; and five grandchildren.

"When I married Gil," Mead once told The Washington Post, "he would say to me, 'One day, there will be considerably more money.' But I didn't want to believe our life would be any different, because wealth has never been one of my concerns. My concern has been having good friends, and wealth can separate you from them. . . . I never wanted money to set me apart.

"I wanted to be just like everybody else."