This past week I escaped to the past by reading about JFK in a book written in 1965 by his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, ie MY TWELVE YEARS WITH JOHN F. KENNEDY.

Throughout the book, the name of JFK's friend, Paul Fay, came up many times and I made a mental note to re-read (or at least look at the pictures) the book Fay wrote in 1967 about his friendship with JFK, ie THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY.

I hadn't yet gotten around to doing that (except to look on the bookshelf to assure myself it was there) because in the meantime the other Evelyn Lincoln book I'd ordered arrived in the mail, ie KENNEDY AND JOHNSON, and I started reading that instead of Fay's.

And now, this morning (as I googled JFK, a ritual I perform every day) I read in the news that Paul Fay has died at age 91:

Paul Fay dies at 91; friend of JFK, former Navy official (He met the future president when they were both in the Navy, joined his administration as undersecretary of the Navy and wrote a best-selling book about their friendship). Los Angeles Times, Sep 30, 2009

This has inspired me to pull Fay's book from the shelf NOW (not later) and share his pleasure of JFK's company with "Orwell Today" readers through photos and an excerpt. ~ Jackie Jura

Often I find myself remembering one evening up at the Cape in November, 1961. The President had been working with great concentration on his budget on the Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving, but he joined the other members of the family, my wife and myself up at his father's house for cocktails and dinner on Saturday night.

He was pleased by the accomplishments of that week, and after dinner he suggested that I sing "Hooray for Hollywood." I said I would if everyone else would agree to perform.

I blasted out my specialty, Teddy sang "Heart of My Heart," and Eunice also sang, while Joan played the piano. Then everyone in the room insisted that the President sing.

"Do you know the 'September Song'?" he asked Joan. She played the chorus two or three times, and then the President began to sing thouse haunting words:

The earlier performances had been greeted with boisterous, friendly clapping, but now we were all silent. Suddenly, I realized as I never had before that these days were rushing past, and that we were living in a time that could never be regained. Then he spoke the next lines:

We did not know then that the extraordinary man who had already achieved so much would not live to see the September of his own life, but would die in the blazing summer of his youth.

Each year, as the month of November approaches, I, like hundreds of millions of other people all over the world, cannot escape the recollection of those senseless shots on a Dallas street. But we must never let John Kennedy's tragic death obscure or shadow the triumphant victory of his life. [end quoting from The Pleasure of His Company]

September Song, Jimmy Durante, 1955, You Tube

Friend of JFK in War and in Washington (Mr. Fay, a San Francisco businessman after his years as Navy under secretary during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, got to know Kennedy in the fall of 1942, when Mr. Fay was a young Navy ensign assigned to the PT Boat School in Melville, R.I. Kennedy, a junior naval officer at the time, was Mr. Fay's instructor). Washington Post, Sep 30, 2009

Paul Fay - ex-Navy official, JFK friend - dies (Mr. Fay's memoir of his friendship with Kennedy, "The Pleasure of His Company," was a best-seller in 1967. It was a book "that could only have been written by a close friend," said Time magazine, "and few were closer than Red Fay."). San Francisco Chronicle, Sep 28, 2009

JFK-friend Paul 'Red' Fay dies in Woodside (...He contributed his time to such charitable causes as the Robert Odell Foundation, the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation, the Youth Tennis Foundation, and the American Ireland Fund. The fund's San Francisco chapter named him "Man of the Year" in 1995). The Almanac, Sep 25, 2009

JFK PT-109 SONG

JFK PLUM PUDDING SWIM

JFK PT-109 WHO'S WHO

JFK TO NAVAL CADETS

JFK SAVED THE MARINES

JFK'S PT-59 CREW

JFK'S PT 109 CREW

JFK SWAM TO NARU NOT NAURU

JFK'S LETTER TO SOLOMONS

JFK PT-109 MOVIE

THE STORY OF PT-109

JFK NEPHEW THANKS NATIVES

JFK'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS

JFK TRUTHS & UNTRUTHS & JFK ASSASSINATION PUZZLE PIECES