father Daniel McNamara, SJ

Photo: Father Heyden, Father Repetti, Father Saderra-Mata, and Father Selga at the Manila Observatory, c. 1932. Image credit: Manila Observatory Archives.

My original contact with Fr. Francis Heyden was through a book: Portraits of American Jesuits by Margaret Bourke White. I was in 4th yr High School at St. Mary's Parochial HS in Manhasset N.Y. A was trying to decide what to takeup as a major course in College as the end of the school year was coming. I had built a telescope in grade school and was also active in the Mass servers group in the school. Trying to combine these two interests lead me to look at the boks in my father's sook shelf. There i found he book of Portraits and the short write up on fr. Heyden showed me the two interests I had could be combined. I then wrote to apply to the Jesuits of the NY Province and also to Georgetown to apply to study astronomy under Fr. Heyden. The first reply was from the Jesuits so I entered in august 15, 1957.When Fr. Heyden retired from Georgetown some 30years later he returned to the Manila Observatory where we met again but now i was his superior/Rector! God has a sense of humor.

In thoase last years of his life I knew Fr. FRank as an aging priest educator. one time a report came from the college that FR. heyden 's class was misbehaving. Upon investig still felt the need to take the walk from the third floeeration I found Fr. Heyden lecturing as usual but when quiz time came he was helping the co-eds take the quiz by himself supplying the answers . A girl would raise her hand and Fr. Frank would tell her to come to the front of the class to his desk. There he would go over the questions with her and then write in the answers for her. Soon the whole class followed her example and Fr. Frank did likewise with each of them. this lead me to speak with him some time later and suggest to him that maybe it was time to go from teaching to writing.

He followed this idea and wrote an undergrad text in astronomy which the college published and we used in classroom teaching. The title he wanted was "The Compleat Astronomer" but when published it was found to have been reworded by the printer as "The Complete Astronomer", the editor of the press assuming the suggested name was a misprint. I took over teaching his class using his book-with the unintended title!

FR. Heyden continued doing research to the extent that he had spectroheliographic pictures sent out regularly to his network of interested researchers around the world. But eventually the special film he used originally made by Eastman Kodak no longer became available. He tried to switch to digital printouts but these never matched the film based photos. I finally had to tell him that we were no longer going to do photospheric solar work, as the pollution of Manila skies forbade it. The future of such work lay in the space instruments that were back then beginning to be developed. He accepted that but still felt he needed to be in his observatory office each day. I can remember that towards the end of his life . he had had a fall and as he was recovering was still feeling the need to make the painful trip from his room on the third floor of the residence, across the lawn to theh is solar office and climb the stairs to his desk. He gave a sigh of relief when one day I told him he no longer needed to do that! "It is OK Fr, you do not need to go to your office today."

During those final days one of the sustaining factors for him was his ministry as the parish priest in a nearby middle class parish church near by the Observatory. He would have Mass there for the people and at times would enjoy taking the children of the parishioners for a Sunday afternoon swim in the college pool.Many people remember him as the "Lolo"/grandfather surrounded by the small children all around him in the pool.

Submitted to Laura Caron via email October 29, 2017.