Books: The President’s Buddy

THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY by Paul B. Fay Jr. 262 pages. Harper &Row. $5.95.

It was dinnertime one December night in 1959, and the patriarch of the clan was ventilating one of his favorite complaints. “No one,” said Joe Kennedy, a man worth more than $250 million then as now, “appears to have the slightest concern for how much they spend.” The chastened familial silence that greeted this remark was at length broken by one of his sons. Said John F. Kennedy: “We’ve come to the conclusion that the only solution is to have Dad work harder.”

This intimate glimpse of Jack Kennedy—and of his father—appears in a book that could only have been written by a close friend. There were few closer than Red Fay, who was an usher at Kennedy’s wedding to Jacqueline Bouvier, a kay campaign aide in Kennedy’s first race for the U.S. House of Representatives and, ultimately, President Kennedy’s Under Secretary of the Navy—a title conferred entirely in the name of friendship.

Kennedy clearly enjoyed Fay’s company, and saw to it that it was never in short supply. An uninhibited California Irishman, Fay was invariably good for a laugh, whether singing Hooray for Hollywood in a Morton Downey tenor or cheerfully playing straight man to the Kennedy wit. “Grand Old Lovable,” was Kennedy’s name for his pal, and Fay strove to deserve it. One day at church the President, who rarely carried any money, leaned over to his friend. “Slip me at least a ten,” he whispered to Fay. “I want them to know this is a generous President.” Grand Old Lovable obliged.

Of the 200-odd posthumous salutes to John Kennedy, The Pleasure of His Company is possibly the only one that does not try to be significant. Paul Fay has sensibly confined himself to an account of his friendship, and the result is both ingenuous and warm. The fact that Fay’s book is being serialized in the daily press and has begun to make the bestseller lists can be taken as an indication that, while the last serious tomes about Kennedy’s Administration may have been published, the last glimpses of his personality have not.