Jay was the best of friends with the fearlessness, irreverence, sense of humor and bedrock loyalty I associate with his Irish background. Much deserves to be said here but I'll only recount that one quip of his that I think may be the funniest extemporaneous ad lib I've ever heard. Our English teacher reads ever so melodiously from the book in her hands: "I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree". Jay responds instantly in a raucous, fun voice: "But a dog never ruined a poem." On several occasions he gave these lessons in the literature of comical repartee.
Even his acts of loyalty were instantaneous with action never impeded by intellectual dithering. After a soccer game against Stamford where they had taught us all sorts of new dirty tricks, I remember Jay organizing a carload to go right into their neighborhood that night to settle a number of scores. That might sound today like an inappropriate thing today but for Jay it seemed only his internal sense of justice had been violated, a matter of right and wrong. The game had been extremely dirty with most of it out of the view of the refs. My father was astounded. There had been an injustice. Was that the closest we ever had to a rumble in New Canaan? Have you seen the movie "Michael Collins"?
Those were some dramatic memories, but the most meaningful to me were such as the welcome in his home, learning to water ski behind his dad's boat, and the bouncy attitude of his lovely mother. He looked out for me on two occasions.
Larry Smith
Jay was the best of friends with the fearlessness, irreverence, sense of humor and bedrock loyalty I associate with his Irish background. Much deserves to be said here but I'll only recount that one quip of his that I think may be the funniest extemporaneous ad lib I've ever heard. Our English teacher reads ever so melodiously from the book in her hands: "I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a tree". Jay responds instantly in a raucous, fun voice: "But a dog never ruined a poem." On several occasions he gave these lessons in the literature of comical repartee.
Even his acts of loyalty were instantaneous with action never impeded by intellectual dithering. After a soccer game against Stamford where they had taught us all sorts of new dirty tricks, I remember Jay organizing a carload to go right into their neighborhood that night to settle a number of scores. That might sound today like an inappropriate thing today but for Jay it seemed only his internal sense of justice had been violated, a matter of right and wrong. The game had been extremely dirty with most of it out of the view of the refs. My father was astounded. There had been an injustice. Was that the closest we ever had to a rumble in New Canaan? Have you seen the movie "Michael Collins"?
Those were some dramatic memories, but the most meaningful to me were such as the welcome in his home, learning to water ski behind his dad's boat, and the bouncy attitude of his lovely mother. He looked out for me on two occasions.