Obituary: Frank Peter Jay, 95, Longtime Port Washington Resident

Frank Peter Jay, a 70-year resident of Port Washington died there at his home on Monday, Feb. 27 at the age of 95 with his wife of 70 years, Jayne Charles Jay at his side.

A lifelong summer resident of North River, New York in the Adirondack Mountains, Frank will be buried there in the family plot in North River, this summer.

Writer, poet, educator, lexicographer and all around bon vivant, Frank was a professor of English at Fordham University for 46 years.

Father of nine: Jennifer (Wally), Christopher (Robin), Alison (Stan), Angela (Edward), Jonathan (Frayda), Melissa (Jonathon), Bryan (Kathleen), Nicole (Charlie, deceased), Matthew (Jennifer May), Frank also had seventeen grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He will be missed by all.

The following is an obituary written by Frank himself some years ago:

“Jay, Frank P. of Port Washington and North River, N.Y. died on (date of knock-off). Husband of Jayne Charles Jay and father of J, C, A, A, J, M, B, N and M, He taught English at Fordham University for 46 years and was also a lexicographer and editor for Funk & Wagnalls, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and Reader’s Digest. A writer of many articles and short stories, he served with the USAAF during World War II.

Instead of flowers, please buy a drink for some deserving drunk.”

Obituary and eulogy (below) submitted to Patch by Bryan Jay

We have lost an original from “The Greatest Generation”, and he will be deeply missed by all.

Professor Frank Peter Jay, Recipient of the Double Bene Merenti award, from Fordham University. Editor In Chief of Funk and Wagnels, Readers Digest, Editor In Chief of IEEE Standards Dictionary. Author of a multitude of short stories and books. Known to my siblings and me simply as “Dad” the most brilliant man I have ever known.

My father was a lover of the written word. He was a voracious reader, who always had a book, or the New York Times in his hands. Afterward, I would look at them, and you could see that he had made corrections and highlighted any grammatical errors, or incorrect use of a word that he encountered, and he never missed one! His opinion is that nowadays people (even editors) just do not use the correct grammar or worse, punctuation. You know how nervous it made me anytime I had to leave him a note?? They were often corrected too!

His love of the beautiful Adirondack Mountains was legendary. It was also contagious to his wife of 70 years, and each of his children, and increased with each gorgeous summer we spent there. It was also the inspiration for many of his writings, many still not published. He was a “Woodsman” that lamented the changing ways of his beloved woods, and the passing of the legendary characters he had come to know in his young formative years. In fact one of the last times he spoke to me, he was regaling me with a hunting trip he and his buddy Jim Burns and he were on up to Hour Pond. It must have taken place 75-80 years before, but as always, listening to him you felt like you were there, and in fact could smell the woods and the campfire just as he described it.

To say that he had a way with words is such an understatement, as it was more like a relationship with each word. He weaved stories in a prose style, in my opinion, not seen since Twain, Faulkner, or Dickens. The eloquence of his words are so evident in his writings, where he takes you away to the people and places he wants to show you, or visit with.

Most of his writing or paper corrections for school were done on the 6:05 train from Port Washington on his way to work in Manhattan, or on his return train that arrived back in Port Washington around 10:00 PM 5 nights per week. He had an incredible attention to detail, and was always present, even when you made the mistake of thinking he was not paying attention. It was my job during the summer to bring tomatoes and vegetables I had grown, up to my parents in North River. My father like all of us always looked forward to the first fresh tomatoes. That year, my plants were not ripening very quickly, while a neighbor of mine had full blown production from his plants. He was nice enough to give me a large bag to bring to my parents, which I did. I decided I would not tell them that they were not from my garden. My father took one look at these gorgeous specimens and said to me “These aren’t from your garden, they look like they are from Bill Kitley’s garden!” and of course he was absolutely right! How did he just know that??

He was just as comfortable walking through the canyons of New York City, as he was walking through his beloved woods of the Adirondacks. During the summer, my parents would pack us all up, and we would head to the Adirondacks for the summer. My father would commute each week back to NYC, and return every Friday for the weekend. To ensure that none of us would have any time to wander off into trouble, there were always a long list of chores to be done in his absence, written in his hand writing on a yellow legal pad page held by a magnet on the fridge. The chores including weeding in the garden, or cutting firewood and stacking, cutting and raking the hay from the pastures, to be put in the barn for our donkey or our horses. All during the week, my mother would constantly remind us that we needed to get this done before Friday evening. We always thought she was just overly nervous, as there was nothing to be concerned about. Very often my brothers and I would be out in the garden weeding by flashlight on Friday evening before his arrival. If you ever held a flashlight while you were hoeing weeds at night, you can appreciate the innate skill this required! The garden was always his first stop for inspection, which made the harrowing weeding at night even more urgent!

In our family, he is the most quoted and imitated, as he had a plethora of sayings and ditties that he would use. Some of them are “I’m in the position to do you a world of good.” Or whenever you asked him how is it going today, his dead pan response would be “sinking rapidly”. Or when he would call me at work and I asked “Who is this?” His response would be “It is I your father, the author of your existence.” He was also one of the funniest guys I knew, and possessed a quick wit, with a very dry delivery. Even in the end when his family was gathered around him, he was making jokes and making us all laugh with things he was saying, and always as clear as a bell no matter what shape he was in.

He was a man dedicated to his family, and even more so to his wife of 70 years. I swear they were paired up as they were both each others only worthy opponents. The discussions they would have were often lively, and covering subjects that they each knew quite a lot about, but was so esoteric and intellectual, we would often try to back out of the room as quickly as we had entered. They met while they were doing their undergrads at Fordham, and due to space issues, the classes were held in the Woolworth building across from City Hall. I cannot help but think back at what those days were like for them, every time I walk past the Woolworth Building. It was a time leading up to World War 2, and beyond. They obviously made a dashing couple, and had a long lifetime together ahead of them!

My father and I had a routine later on in life when he was not driving. I would pick him up every few weeks, and take him for a haircut and hot shave at “The Palace Barber Shop” up on Main Street. He always preferred “Alex” as he was “a real barber, in fact, he was the same barber that cut my brothers and my hair when we were kids. After the haircut and shave, we had this routine where we would drive about town a bit. Down Main Street, and always a stop at our town dock to see what the water was like, how many sail boats were in the water, or if anyone was fishing. We would then turn up lower Main and make a left up Fifth Avenue and stop across from 29 Fifth Avenue, which was the first house my parents moved into when they made the move. Sometimes we would sit there for a while and I would watch his face, as he got lost in the memories of those days long before. He would share some of these memories with me of the warm bathroom, the coal furnace, the fires they would have in the fireplace, and the wonderful meals my mother would always prepare for them, and again I would feel like I was there, although I was born many years later. I often said to him what a good life it sounded like to me, and he would agree. This brings me back to one of his favorite sayings, which is “All’s well that ends”.

Courtesy photo