Saturday, February 8, 2025
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RARA AVIS
Edmund Haines Taylor Hay, Jr
Sometimes a passing, even though poignant and indescribably sad, has a fabulous Joy attached to it for a life fabulously lived.
This is one of those times.
Yesterday my friend Taylor took flight nine days shy of his 95th birthday after a heroic OG grand parlor court-hold that had us all orbiting as disparate-perioded comets for 64 days, dutifully orchestrated by his children and lovely wife Joanna playing fiddle music by a roaring winter fire night after night in their elegantly well lived-in old Kentucky Home on the Kentucky River.
Not a bad transitional milieu from which old Taylor peacefully ascended I'd say. Kind of a win. But Taylor was not old by any stretch of the imagination. He just had other work to do, evidently.
Taylor was not a shy person, tales and remembrances of this Maestro of Alacrity, this loquacious Bon Vivant who touched so many lives, in so many ways are endless in variety and international in scope. This absurdly handsome teller of tales and spinner of many of dubiously unverifiable origin never failed to leave you grinning...and thinking. His mind (and handshake!) was a force to be reckoned with, there was always a challenge with Taylor., better have your game on.
And that was consistently Taylor. As a family friend and sometime business associate, I was aware of him my entire life, he was that cool old guy (he was probably a ripe old 40 and I was 10). We became friends later once my folks moved on. He told me wonderfully vivid stories of my own people, he seemed to know them all, collegiate years in Virginia, ROTC to VMI to UVA football hijinks, dances, adventures and business ventures, of the pilot father I never knew.
Entrepreneur, builder, inventor, rockhard-gripped (to the very end!) fitness entrepreneur, athlete, comedian, musician, poet, sage, he had a unique genius and was a man of intense complexity with a heart that spilled out all over any soul lucky enough to cross his path...well, most anyway, he did have a bit of a complex somewhat feisty, prickly side to be sure, of which all 8 of his equally astonishing and accomplished progeny and their constituent matriarchs will surely attest! He wanted to know your business, whatever it was and was one of those great listeners that leaves you with better bootstraps to yank on the next day.
Oh yeah, and he owned a Rembrandt and a disarming infectious smile.
There's way too much to write here, but the last thing he said to me in that grand old music filled parlor with the roaring fire on that freezing Kentucky River valley night a month or so ago was that he'd be "sittin' on my shoulder" soon.
*
When the news came to me yesterday, I was sitting out here on the patio in LA with my daughter, smoke cleared, for now, high up in the San Gabriels looking up at a big old age-patinaed Redtail perched in a Pine tree. We'd both been sitting there quite a while, sizing each other up, neither in any kind of hurry. But if hawks could grin, and I'm fairly certain that anatomically that's somewhat problematic, I saw that ol friend and Truest of Kentucky Gentleman Taylor in those shiny wise eyes as he lazily alit, effortlessly rising slowly on an updraft and smoothly soaring over the hills to the west directly into a setting Pacific sun.
So tonight, as I watch the sunset and reflect on this great character's life and passing, I'm thankful that sitting on my shoulder I've a rare bird indeed.
Godspeed Taylor!
