Jackie: So glad to speak with you yesterday. Barclay & I are still shocked when we heard. He had a great sense of humour and always a smile and chuckle. So sorry for your loss.  Betty & Barclay Crozier. Orono, Ontario

Dear Jackie,
As it is so painful for us, we know, that you must be devastated.
Please remember that we deeply liked him..for Biz,  Paris was a brother.
We just saw each other once a year, but the connection was strong and sincere. We were looking forward to our annual gathering for fun and good spirit. He was at the center of each joke.. 
He will be missed for ever. Courage.. Warmly,

Dear Jackie:
I just ran in to Loretta and heard and am in a state of disbelief.  I don't have to tell you that he was a great guy and a wonderful, encouraging friend and enriched us all for having known him.

Dear Jackie, 
We were shocked and sad when we heard that Paris is gone. He was great fun at our Hill parties; I am sorry we never will get a chance to know him better. Jackie, this must be very hard for you. We hope that friends and family will be a comfort. 
Anja and Andreas, neighbors on Old Gale Hill Rd

Dear Jackie,
I was really sorry to hear about Paris. I have some great memories of him from the first time I met him at my grandparents wedding anniversary to visiting you both in New York and seeing you both at Marc and Seonaid's wedding. The first time I met Paris, he let me play with his video camera the whole time and kept making jokes about my bright coloured socks. I was made very welcome when I visited you both in New York and it really felt like we had a personal tour guide! It was the same when I met you both in Sydney where is felt like It hadn't been long since I last saw Paris.

I will always have very fond memories of Paris and the way he always brightened up the room!

Dear Jackie,
We are so sad, shocked and dismayed at hearing of Paris' passing. He was delightful and interesting to talk with and a kind and happy person. We will miss him greatly. JoAnn, Rick and Nick

Dearest Jackie -- My heart goes out to you. How I miss Paris -- not nearly as you do, f course -- but at this season I think of him especially and anticipate our loud hugs that we'd exchange at Dan and Clellie Lynch's before one of their luscious feasts at holiday times. And I'd take special joy, too, in how fondly Paris would regard my two boys, Isaac and Davy, and I wish he could see them as they grow up. There was something about Paris that made me love him immediately... his smile, his mischievous twinkle, his mellow voice. Well, as we say, may his memory be a blessing. It is for me.

Dear Jackie:

Celia and I are experiencing immense sadness at the news of Paris' passing.  It's at this time of year that we think of you both, remembering the visits when you would come to Canada for Christmas.  I especially loved the pontifications over the pool table with the glass of "Dram". The conversations and topics were always fun.

We will miss him.

Dear Aunt Jackie,

Charleen, Eli, and I were so sad to hear about Paris' passing.  We'll miss the giant bear hugs he would always give when we would see him and I know Charleen will miss the "Hello Darling" when she would speak to him on the phone.  To me he'll always be Uncle Paris, asking how we're doing, how was work, and what we were up to.  There are so many memories of seeing you and Paris that I don't really know where to begin.  But, I will say that one of my fondest memories is a conversation Paris and I had when I was in my late teens and he turned to me and out of the blue asked if I considered him my uncle.  I looked at him a little confused because I had never really thought of it any other way so I said "Of course you are."  We both smiled at each other and went back to whatever it was we were doing.  

Good bye Uncle Paris, we love you and will miss you.

We will remember this big guy with very fond memories - his laugh, bear hugs and sense of fun. We had a great day in Cambridge Paris whilst poor Jackie had to work - a day to treasure. It was a pleasure to have met you.

Paris, my friend. A eulogy.

 Hi, my name is Danny Lynch, and I am a friend of Paris.  I am here today to tell you what you already know.  Paris Mays was a good man.  Paris had a good life. Paris was taken from us way, way too soon, and we are here to mourn him and cry, to mourn him and smile at our happy memories of this happy man.
 If he walked in here today, well, he'd be late, he'd be the best dressed man in the room, and by the end of the morning he would have given everyone a big hug.
 I first met Paris and Jackie on the Labor Day weekend of 1984. We had just bought out house in East Chatham, NY, and not having met our neighbors that summer, we decided to have a party, inviting all the folks on our rural, upstate dirt road to come by, putting the invites in their mailboxes. Maybe twenty came that afternoon, including Paris and Jackie.  As the evening wore on, many left, but Paris and Jackie stayed on talking and laughing till we heard the birds start singing and the saw the sun edging up over the horizon. That night was magical.  This was the first of many, many such evenings, most not so long.
 A city guy, he was not fond of bugs, mosquitoes, gnats or any kind of flying insects. He might wear a big, white, knotted handkerchief over his head to keep the midges away,
 Paris loved cars. The first one he ever owned is parked at the top of Jackie's driveway, enjoying its retirement, under a canvas cover as the seasons pass.  When the flood from a hurricane ruined his jeep, his reaction was painful to watch.  He would spend hours, maybe days mulling over the purchase of a new car, and when he finally took possession of the Cadillac, for example, the perfectionist in him, would find flaws in the instrument panel or the seat controls. He expected the things he bought to be perfect because that is why he bought them. 
  Paris loved to drive, but he did not relax. Driving to him seemed to be a competition between him and the other cars, a Darwinian struggle to get into the fastest lane, to take the most complicated but effective route, to use his radar detector to evade the police speed traps. When he rode with Jackie driving, he took on the the role of the anxious coach, exhorting her to watch out for this car and overtake that one. He expressed his intuitive, competitive philosophy best one day when he was guiding her to find a space in traffic to exit: he uttered, with all seriousness, this Paris paradox,“Speed up, but slow down.” That's why Jackie and Paris usually drove up from the city in two cars.
 We might pity the traffic cops who over the years gave this man a traffic ticket. To Paris, this indignity was but the first act in a multi scene courtroom drama in which he established the narrative of the injustice which he gladly shared with me and then crafted his courtroom strategy.  One of his favorite tactics was to demand of the officer in court to describe where he had been parked, what his record of tickets was and, Paris delighted in this one, how recently his radar gun had been calibrated and would he kindly produce the records of the calibration for Paris' inspection. These upstate cops with their Smokey the Bear hats didn't know what hit them. Who is this guy? they said to themselves. Where did he come from?

 Well, he came from Harlem. He grew up in an apartment with his mom, Jule, and his brother Donald and his sister Loretta, who was he said like a second mother to him. She tells me when she was a teenager and got her first job and had some money to spend, she bought a bedroom set with two beds, so she could watch over Paris. Some nights, she had to carry her little brother into bed.  She could watch him in the apartment but out on the streets, he would run a little wild with his friends.  
 Behind their apartment building were poles with telephone cables hanging down from them, a too attractive nuisance for boys who wanted to play Tarzan.  They would use the cables to swing from one pole to the other, and sometimes, like Paris one day, not make it.  He fell and his teeth came out his cheek.  Alarmed, Jule had to rush him to the hospital.
 He horrified her years later when he told her that he and the guys on a lark would size up the gaps between the five story apartment buildings and run across the tarred roof and jump the five or ten feet to the other roof. How many kids today would leave their video games to go upstairs and try to fly like Superman? Some days he and the kids playing in Morningside Park would feel the need for exploration and adventure. They would climb the rocks there and pretend they were mountaineers.  They would go down into the subway and hop a train, thrilled by  the prospect of riding downtown.  They would consult the maps in the subway cars and pick a new spot in the city to visit. All the fun came to a screeching halt one day, when Paris came face to face with another passenger, namely, his mother Jule, who was not at all amused. That's probably where he began to learn how to talk himself out of situations when he was busted.  But there was no appeal from Jule.  She was the law.
 Jule taught the family to be generous.  There was a young friend of Paris's named Michael, whose mother alas had alcohol issues.  One night, Jule came home at 1am from her job as a waitress. She found Michael, hungry, locked out, sitting on the stoop.  She took him upstairs, fed him and put him to bed with Paris.  Even on through their adult years Paris looked after Michael, taking care of tiny amounts of money Michael gave him for safe keeping to dole out when he was hungry.
 Every family has its own stories, told and re-told down through the years. Loretta's boyfriend, Johnnie, was at the apartment when Jule had cooked one of Paris's favorite meals. Now, Johnnie felt at home there.  Loretta says, “his name was in the pot.”  Jule had set aside a portion of the dish—smothered liver—for when Paris came home.  Well, as Paris came in the door, he saw the last piece of his liver going down Johnnie's throat.  For years after, whenever they ran into him, Donald, for one would say, “Hey, you ate Paris' liver.”
 Jule always told the kids to get an education. Paris went to Aviation, which he liked, to become a pilot, which he didn't. He went to City College to try architecture, but realized that wasn't for him, so turned to computers.

 How proud his family must be to have raised him! Jule and Loretta 

and Donald!  How proud his daughter Tatia and Royce and his grandchildren, 

Channing  and Monroe must be to have such a good man as a father and 

grand dad!  Morgan and Jonathan and Kelly, Lauren and Avery, your uncle 

was the best.

Good men like him are rare.

 He did not have an easy life. He was a man who wanted from the core of his being for all men and women to be brothers and sisters, but instead he had to grow up in a racist society. He was a man of peace, a peaceful soul, who was forced to go to war. He told me often of a moment when his life hung in the balance in Vietnam. After being sent out on too many patrols with his infantry unit, he found himself in a hospital. It was a very dark time for him. So, one day, the doctor comes in, looks at him, and says, “Mays, you're going back.”  Uh-huh, Paris looks at the doc, thinking, “Back to where?”
“We're sending you home.” Oh, sweet. Back to Janie and Tatia.

 Paris was a perfectionist, whether it was carpentry or house renovation or I guess programming main frame computers. I once asked him to help me install a washing machine in my house upstate.  Simple, run a few pipes up from the basement, bringing the water up and sending the discharge back down, having a couple of lengths of copper tubing attached to prevent air knocking. We would do some measuring, so cutting, some soldering. Piece of cake.  Jackie reminded Paris that they were going to Canada at 6am the next morning. Sure, No problem. It was, after all, only 10am when we started.  We went off to Harry Hicks hardware store to pick up some copper tubing.Came back and attacked the opening to the basement.  Back when they built this house in the 1860s, they still had the big trees around, which meant that they had thick planks to build with. Back to the hardware store to get different drill bits. Back to the house to work on those holes.  Down in the basement to tap into the water supply, back to the hardware store for pieces to join the tubing to the pipes, then playing with the torch to sweat the bonds with solder, then we decided we should have used flexible tubing instead of straight with all these joints. Then back to the hardware store. We finished that little job at 1am, 15 hours after we started. The tubing didn't leak, the washing machine filled and emptied. The hardware store prospered, and once again Paris brought perfection, though at some cost in time and energy, to a job he started. Then off to the drive to Canada.

 When he wasn't grubbing around my spider webbed basement, Paris was an elegant dresser. He wore the best and he looked the best. As my daughter-in-law, Emily, mused, “The flags at Brooks Brothers are flying at half-mast today.” If he went to London, he would come back with a thousand-dollar raincoat from Burbury's. (He loved to walk the streets of New York in the rain.  This is Paris weather today.) If it was winter, he would go out and buy himself an elegant overcoat. If he needed a haircut, only his regular guy in Harlem would do, even if he was upstate and had to drive 140 miles and back for a trim.

 I can still hear his voice in my head, saying “Danny, Danny, Danny” as we sat long into the night listening to Ahmed Jamal or Frank Sinatra and sipping brandy as he talked about his worries and his plans. The worries would fall away when when he talked about a project. He lived in the present, mostly, and tried not to let the past burden him. We would talk about how we grew up at the same time just a few miles apart, he in Harlem, 114th Street and 8th Avenue, me in Washington Heights, 187th and St. Nicholas. I told him that I was raised in a society that was a segregated prison and I wasn't really aware of it.  That's the way things were.  Paris, among others, taught me that things didn't have to be that way.
 He would never hurt any one's feelings. He always remembered birthdays and Mother's day. He loved his family.

 In talking to people in the last few days, they told me that what struck them so much was that when they would meet Paris, even just a day after seeing him, he would seem genuinely surprised and happy to see them again, the joy lighting up his face. He had, what one friend called, a beaming presence.
 I still expect him to walk into the room, late, because, you know, he had to iron his shirt, and he'd be beaming from underneath his hat, saying in that happy bass voice, and wrapping me in a hug, saying “Danny! Danny!” and then going round the room, greeting and joking and laughing. For so long he has been the life of the party, and now, now we have to say goodbye. 
 Good bye, Paris, my dear old friend. We will never forget you.

Dear Jackie,

My family and I were so shocked to hear about the passing of Paris. He was always so kind and ebullient. We will miss him dearly.  

Paris was the man who showed me how to tie a proper bow tie.  We were chatting in our lobby in 15 Oval and I told him how dapper he looked in his blue houndstooth coat and bow tie.  I said something like: a real gentleman knows how to tie a proper bow tie just like yours. I have yet to get there. "Easy!" he said. In a matter of minutes he tied and retied his tie at least five times to show me how it was done. No mirrors were needed for Paris. I was amazed.  He loaned me his tie so I could give it a try. I fumbled of course and he fixed it for me. 

I've only wore a bow tie a few times, but I'll never forget Paris's lesson in the lobby in 15 Oval. 

Paris was a gentleman's gentleman--the kind who not only sports the perfect bow tie, but has the kindness and patience to teach others. We'll miss you Paris. 

Andres Henriquez
Neighbor and Friend
15 Stuyvesant Oval

To Jackie and family members,  Paris was a friend of the family for many years and although we didn't see each other that often when we did it was as if no time had passed. He was a great guy and will be missed by all who knew him. Our sympathy and condolences goes out to you.
John and Barbara Galea and Family.

2009 was a good year - we saw Paris twice.  The first time was in New York in July.  The three of us went to Governors Island (where Paris had joined up for National Service).  We hired bikes and toured the Island.  We don't know whether Paris ever forgave us!  Then in October, Paris and Jackie flew to Sydney for Marc and Seonaid's wedding.  The evening before the wedding, Marc took us to Darlinghurst for a meal.  Paris loved the 'Ribs'.  We loved his sense of humour and his big bear hugs.  Paris, we miss you.

Cliff and Di

Dear Jackie,
I am deeply saddened to hear about the sudden passing of Paris. He was such a warm and compassionate man and always kept a positive outlook on things. I will never forget our philosophical discussions about life in general and the possibilities of civil aviation in particular.
Please accept my condolences and know that Darlene and I are here for you at this difficult time.

Dear Jackie, I have always considered Paris Mays one of my very best friends, I will surely miss him and pray that God will bless you in your hour of sorrow.

Clarence Hoggard

Dear Jackie,

Di and Cliff emailed me to let me know about Paris.  What a shock. I had just spotted your names in my contact list when I was updating it the other day and thought that I should contact you to say hello.  In fact, I think it was the same day that Paris had died.  

I had enjoyed meeting Paris when we were all in Sydney.  He seemed such an amiable and vibrant man.  I send you my heartfelt sympathy.

All the best,

Linda Wright

I am and always have been your friend.
You introduced me to the ones you loved as your friend.
I am a better person from knowing you.
We had many great times at Manny Hanny on Wall Street.
I will always love you.

Dear Paris, 
My "OLD" friend from graduate school and fellow New Yorker/Manhattanite. I will miss you...I will miss you...You saw a lot in me and never let me forget it. I saw a lot in you, and I always reminded you. After 31 years of friendship, I will miss, in part, and you'll be with me in whole.
Thank you for the friendship and allowing us to have Jackie as a friend too.
Love,
Sam

Dearest Paris, you brought so much joy and laughter to so many. You will be missed by everyone whose lives you've touched. Your spirit will live on in the hearts of your loved ones. Rest peacefully gentle soul.

OBITUARY

Paris R. Mays

September 17, 1943 – December 3, 2014

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