Paul B. Fay

Paul Burgess Fay Jr. (8 July 1918, San Francisco, California – 23 September 2009 Woodside, California), was the Acting United States Secretary of the Navy in November 1963, and a close confidant of President John F. Kennedy.

Paul B. Fay Jr was born on July 8, 1918, in the City of San Francisco, County of San Francisco, California to Paul B. Fay Sr (1884-1970) and his wife, Katherine Oliver Fay (1887-1980). Fay Jr attended The Thacher School in Ojai, California, and later Stanford University. After graduating from Stanford in 1941, Fay worked for his father's construction firm, Fay Improvement Co, a Bay-area paving contractor, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

Fay attended Officer Candidate School and was assigned to PT boat training at Melville, Rhode Island, where John F. Kennedy was his instructor. They were assigned to the same base in the South Pacific, though they were not on the same boat. Fay received a Bronze Star during his war service when his boat was disabled by a torpedo that was dropped by a Japanese plane, piercing the hull below the water line but failing to explode. Fay got the boat back to base where it sank.

After his war service, Fay returned to the United States and rejoined his father's company. On 5 October 1946, he married Anita Marcus of Mill Valley, California. They had 3 children: Katherine Fay, Paul Fay III, and Sally Fay Cottingham.

Paul Fay and Kennedy became close friends, and Fay worked on Kennedy's early campaigns for the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, and also on his campaign for U.S. President. Paul Fay was an usher at JFK's wedding.

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