Obituary : Julien V. Weston
Julien Vose Weston of Boston, a lifelong visitor to the Island, died in Cambridge at the age of 93. Born on March 18, 1915, in Brookline, he was the son of Arthur D. and Edna Vose Weston of North Water Street, Edgartown, and the grandson of Julien W. Vose, a retired piano manufacturer, and Anna E. Pease, the granddaughter of Judge Joseph Thaxter Pease of Edgartown. His father was well known on the Vineyard where, after his retirement as Chief Engineer and Deputy Commissioner of Public Health for the commonwealth, he served as the Martha's Vineyard member of the Steamship Authority.
Wes lived every summer of his boyhood in his parents' home and spent many hours at his grandfather's boathouse at Tower Hill where he enjoyed sailing, swimming, and occasionally crewing for his sister, racing champion Virginia Weston Besse. During those years he was a member of the Edgartown Yacht Club. At the age of five, because of his father's distinguished service as an engineer in France during World War II, he was chosen to unveil on July 5, 1920, the tablet at Main Street and Pease's Point Way on which his father's name is inscribed.
Wes graduated from Newton High School and Deerfield Academy, after which he received his B.A. from Harvard College, Class of 1937, with a major in mathematics. Following graduation, he worked for the Human Engineering Laboratory, giving vocational aptitude tests and vocational counseling to students and adults in the Laboratory's branches in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he followed the advice of his mentor, Roger Baldwin, and enlisted in the Aviation Psychology Program at Maxwell Field, Alabama, on Feb. 4, 1942. "If you wait until you are drafted," Roger advised, "they could make you a mess cook."
As an enlisted Aviation Psychologist, Wes tested candidates for aircrew training. After six months he was ordered to the Officer Candidate School in Miami Beach, Fla., and upon graduation was assigned to the Aviation Psychology Program as an administrative officer in the psychological testing units in San Antonio, Texas, Miami Beach, and Biloxi, Miss. With the rank of captain he later served as the administrative assistant to the chief psychologist of the Aviation Psychology Program at the Training Command Headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas. Over one million men were screened for aircrew positions by this program.
After the war, Wes worked for Pan American Airways at LaGuardia Field where he was Personnel Representative for the Middle East and India, a position that required him to travel to cities from Istanbul to Calcutta.
From 1951 to 1968 he was a management consultant in New York City with the firms of Barrington Associates and W.K. Williams Company. As a consultant he specialized in personnel organization and management studies for business and government. While engaged in a study of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, he accepted an appointment by Governor Volpe as the state's Director of Personnel and Standardization, a position he held from 1968 to 1975. After a reorganization of the Bureau of Personnel and Civil Service by the state legislature, he remained in the state service doing personnel work until the end of 1981.
During retirement he pursued his interests in yoga, Masonry, photography, genealogy, Amnesty International, and the arts, especially the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Museum of Fine Arts.
He was a member of the American Psychological Association, the Self-Realization Fellowship of Los Angeles, Columbian Lodge of Boston, and the Boston Harvard Club.
He was predeceased by his sister, Virginia Weston Besse, and survived by her three children, Carol Stevens Eno of Simsbury, Conn., Stephen Besse of Guilford, Conn., and Anne Besse-Shepherd of Sudbury.
Burial services will be private. Memorial donations may be made to the Self-Realization Fellowship, 3880 San Rafael Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90065.
