Francis J. Madden, E'51, and his team had their work cut out for them. Their top-secret project called for a camera sturdy enough to survive a rocket launch, steady enough to take sharp images from a satellite traveling 18,000 miles an hour. Afterwards, the film would be ejected and parachuted back to earth.

It was the late 1950s. The United States had launched nothing into space. The Soviets, on the other hand, had already had success with Sputnik. Madden was one of five engineers charged with developing technology to spy on the USSR and China during the Cold War.

As head of the Itek Optical Systems camera-design group, Madden worked day and night in a Needham, Massachusetts, lab. He was responsible for all engineering development of the camera and its complex optical system. After more than a dozen launches, the team helped put the first spy satellite into space in 1960.

But Madden couldn't exactly share news of his success. The Corona Project, which lasted from 1959 through 1972, was so secret even his family knew nothing about it.

The word's out now. In 1995, Madden was recognized for his work by the U.S. director of central intelligence, and in 2000 he was named a "pioneer of national reconnaissance" by the National Reconnaissance Office. This year, the National Academy of Engineering awarded the five Corona engineers the $500,000 Charles Stark Draper Prize.

Madden's interest in cameras goes way back. "I was an amateur photographer when I was a kid, and had a darkroom," he says. He was also an aerial photographer during World War II.

He attended Northeastern on the GI Bill. "I did pretty well," he says. "I think it's a good school. Without co-op, I might have been a chemical engineer." His first co-op at the Union Paste Company helped guide his career path: "I glued myself together so often I knew this wasn"t for me."

Now Madden shares his expertise with the next generation. The Wollaston resident is a cofounder and active member of Northeastern"s RE-SEED program, through which retired scientists and engineers teach science"s practical applications to elementary and middle school students.

"All in all," says Madden, "I think I've had a pretty interesting life." And that's no secret.

— Katy Kramer, MA'00

  Jeanette McCarthy
  Photo courtesy Jeanette McCarthy

Mayor Domo

"My parents were dead set against my going into politics," says Jeanette McCarthy, MJ'86. "They wanted me to get a PhD in biology."

Actually, as a youngster, McCarthy did have her sights set on becoming a veterinarian. Then she discovered she was afraid of big animals. But big-city politics? No problem. Today, McCarthy serves as the first woman mayor in the history of Waltham, Massachusetts.

Her road to public office started in public housing. "I grew up in the projects until I was thirteen, when my family bought a house," says the lifelong Waltham resident. The family tree included a political branch; her great-uncle, a councilman, worked Waltham's Ward 7 for twenty-seven years.

In 1983, having earned a law degree from Suffolk University Law School, McCarthy enrolled in graduate school at the College of Criminal Justice. "Criminal justice was a good program," she says. "I really enjoyed it, and it helped me understand the school committee," where, in 1986, McCarthy began her political career.

By 1992, she was a staff attorney with the city"s law department. Seven years later, she was city solicitor. In 2002, she was elected city councilor-at-large.

Soon, friends were urging her to run for mayor of Waltham, a city with a population around 59,000. By now, her family was firmly behind a run for the corner office, and in November 2003 she was elected to a four-year term, which began the following January.

Maybe the public arena wasn't her original goal, but it"s a natural fit for someone who"s always wanted to serve others. "I never aspired to be mayor," says McCarthy, "but you have an opportunity to help people out."

Some days, it's difficult to manage this bustling city, home to Bentley College and Brandeis University, where the workweek population doubles owing to commuters coming in from surrounding towns.

The difficulties are no distraction, she says. "I love my city. I'm no different from anyone else."

— Katy Kramer, MA'00

  Dane Vannatter
  Photo courtesy Dane Vannatter

Life is a Cabaret

In his high school's production of Oklahoma, Dane Vannatter, UC'93, had one of the few nonsinging roles. "I think I was the sheriff," he says. "I only sang in the large group numbers."

Nevertheless, this Cowan, Indiana, native was enamored of the spotlight at an early age. "I knew by the time I was ten I would live in the big city, and I knew exactly what I wanted to do—perform in clubs," says Vannatter.

His family had made sure he knew his way around a tune. "My grandmother wrote songs her entire life, as a minister of the Church of God," he says. "She and my grandfather spent their early lives singing for prisoners. I spent a lot of my first nine years with her. She played piano and guitar, and we sang." And his father owned an enormous record collection, which included the work of Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Kay Starr, and other jazz musicians. "It had a huge influence on me," Vannatter says.

In 1990, Vannatter entered a singing contest at Diamond Jim"s Piano Bar in Boston"s Lenox Hotel. His debut made an impression. "The manager invited me back for a singing contest a few weeks later," he says. He won. By 1993, he was singing professionally.

Now, with a Back Stage Bistro Award and three CDs under his belt, the bright lights still beckon. But even songbirds have to eat. So, by day, he works as the executive assistant to the president of Harvard Medical School"s Clinical Research Institute. By night, moonlighting gigs take him to Sardi's and Town Hall, in New York City, and the Regattabar, in Cambridge, among other upscale venues. "I have my career fashioned in such a way that it works," says Vannatter, who lives in Lynn, Massachusetts.

Performing full time is still a siren song. "It's not about being famous. It's about having the freedom to choose—learning material and shaping it the way I want," he says. In other words, having the lead.

— Katy Kramer, MA'00