Dear Claire,

  Your father and I became friends when we were in the same laboratory working for the same professor,Charles Townes, at Columbia in the late 1940's and have been friends since. As graduate students I appreciated the careful study he made of  NYC regulations about the required height for storefront awnings because he knew his height and kept bumping his head into awnings that were legally bound to let him walk under them unchecked. When I came to Bell Labs where he had been building magnetic resonance equipment he generously let me share the use of that equipment with him and we did research together that determined my research directions ever since.

He looked at the  absurdities with a witty detachment  but he was not detached in his love for  your mother and you and  your daughters-he was unrestrainedly  proud and adoring of you all.  He gloried in being surrounded by beautiful women across the generations- his mother ,his wife, his daughter and grand-daughters. He felt lucky and in his secular way - blessed. Although he was often critical he was not unkind and although he had a smutty sense of humor his thoughts were very clean- pasteurized by high ideals. His failing was an excessive modesty- he put too low a price on himself. I did not share this view so it didn't prevent me from being interested in and admiring of him all these long years. I loved him

Bob

 I first knew John casually [at Harvard] as a Wilson post-doc.  Nan and I then met him and Bibi, when we would visit the Andersons in New Jersey and he was at Bell Labs.  Then when we came to Washington in 1961 he was at the National Science Foundation.  Very early we became much closer as a family.  Then he joined me at the ( JFK) White House (President's Science Advisory Panel under Lee Dubridge) and we had a number of years when we saw each other almost daily, while also socializing with our families.

He is an unsung hero of educational reform.  He early understood the need to merge cognitive psychology with education, and he recognized real talent when he saw it, going out of his way to introduce me to Dick Darman and Mike Smith.  He got Glenn Seaborg, Bill Baker and Gerry Holton on the "Nation at Risk" Commission, and they were the ones that actually put together that landmark report.

I think his outspoken personality overshadowed that of your mother, but their love was permanent and real, as was his devotion to his family, and his pride in his grandchildren. I don't think he ever recovered from Bibi's tragic death, although his sense of humor and his command of language, exemplified by his many one-sentence letters to the Editor, remained unparalleled.

I have a special folder of John Mays emails.

 Sadly, I met John and Bibi on just two occasions apiece, so can only share with their friends and family the sketchiest of memories.  But their daughter, Claire, my second cousin, has become one of my dearest and closest friends over the past 27 years since we were introduced by our mutual great-aunt Audrey. Knowledge of her and our long conversations have given me an insight into the central importance of her parents to her and to her daughters, too. And more recently, I have spent three holidays with Claire and her family at Guethary, where I have enjoyed the chance to get to know Chris a little, too. I relish the connection with these two very special cousins.

The first time I met John was one hot Saturday afternoon when he was over in England in the late 1960s.  He caught the train to Wimbledon from central London to visit my mother, Patricia (his first cousin).  He looked very distinguished when we picked him up the station, wearing an elegant grey suit, but also, disarmingly, a bowler hat.  At that time, you might still occasionally see a man in a bowler on his way to the City on a weekday morning, but never on a Saturday.  Combining his headgear with his considerable height, John couldn't have declared more emphatically that he was American rather than English.

Some 20 years later, Claire brought Bibi to stay with Chris, my husband, and Nicholas, our elder son, then seven months old.  I have such fond memories of her charm and good humour, and of a very happy day we all spent together at the legendary Sissinghurst Castle garden in Kent.  I have pictures of Bibi playing with Nicholas in his pushchair on the lawns in front of the venerable red brick of the castle. Later the same month, Claire and Bibi also visited my parents, and my father, Norman, took some lovely shots of her in their garden in Gloucestershire. We treasure them.

I was lucky enough to be in Los Angeles for work in the autumn of 1993.  After my stint was finished, John and Bibi came and picked me up from my hotel (I was no doubt wearing clothes which distinguished me as English) and took me first for lunch in a beach restaurant, and then back to their lovely home at Malibu (subsequently burnt down).  They were both so kind and hospitable, and took pains to make my short stay interesting, enjoyable and varied. it all seemed so glamorous - John pointed out where Ali MacGraw lived, for instance.  He also took me to the Getty Museum, and I appreciated his scholarly comments on that remarkable collection, particularly on the early Italian masters. Bibi meanwhile cooked wonderful meals, one of which we ate watching John's favourite film, Dr Strangelove.  Whenever I now see a Peter Sellars film, I always think of John.

When they said goodbye to me at the airport, I looked forward to seeing them both again, in England, America or France, and I am desperately sad that it was not to be.

John and Bibi Mays saved me from a frigid death in the Chesapeake. I had accepted a job as head of the learning division at the National Institute of Education (NIE), having taken leave from Bell Laboratories, and was living on my sailboat in Solomon’s Island MD while my family arranged to move from NJ to Washington DC. Unfortunately, the winter of 1977-1978 was the coldest seen on the East Coast since before the founding of the Republic (http://www.erh.noaa.gov/lwx/winter/DC-Winters.htm). The tidal Potomac, which was salt water, had frozen over and my sailboat was encased in ice at a marina. When I arose at 5:30 am, I had to perilously navigate a narrow snow-covered finger dock to an unheated concrete-block shower, after which I drove to NIE in Washington. Opportunities for disaster were everywhere. John to the rescue! He and Bibi generously invited me to live with them until the winter dangers subsided.

So I found myself with a new family--and a nice family it was. I will always remember the smell of Bibi’s French coffee in the morning, her flawless meals, and the pleasant, informative intellectual banter over dinner. I was reminded of this while reading Anne Fadiman’s entertaining book Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, about the Fadiman family and their literate discussions. In the end, no remunerations would be accepted for this family service, but I did manage to leave a gift when my stay was over. I am told that this was a pretty poor choice. John never brought me to task.

I first met John when he was science advisor to NIE (before my commitment there). The interview was something of an intelligence test. First he asked me what I thought the message was on a cup he had on the shelf. This was a series of degraded letters, sort of a “fill-in-the blanks” test item. After some discussion about educational research, John went into literary references that required thoughtful response. Our common background in Bell Labs perhaps weighed heavily in his judgment, because we parted with various pleasantries.

From time to time John and I would have lunch together. These lunches usually turned out to be visits to bookstores. John was a good source of information about the latest activities in educational research and development. He knew who the important people were and his advice on where to go with research was well aimed. We held conferences and developed funding initiatives in reading, writing, and even document design (sorely needed in Federal documentation). John’s guidance in all of these areas was important.

Not all was sweetness, however: there were a few acerbic interactions. John’s literate propensities sometimes conflicted with the government bureaucracy. In anticipation of an NIE workshop on writing, he suggested that we invite a previous Library of Congress Poet Laureate. The laureate had gained enough weight that first class was the only way that he could travel comfortably. Of course, first-class travel is anathema in most government agencies. NIE staff objected to a dispensation. John was irate. I’ve forgotten how it turned out, but John did not mince words in support of the laureate.

After I returned to Bell Labs, John and I lost contact for many years. Eventually, the long reach of the Internet brought us together. Voice contact on Skype worked well, although John shied away from video conferencing. But the Internet was another opportunity for John, enabling him easily to send political and humorous zingers to newspapers and magazines. My favorite on-target zinger was a note to the New Yorker wondering what the hell had happened to its cartoons, which had become incomprehensible. John’s humor never failed to amuse.

So my memory of John includes his generosity, intelligence, broad literary interests, and wit. He did not suffer foolish things lightly. I’ll miss those zingers.

I first met John in 1962 when I took a job at NSF.  He was my immediate supervisor -- erudite, witty, and charming. This was the hey day of post-sputnik efforts  to increase science/technology workforce and ensure its capabilities. John was able to enlist prominent scientists and mathematicians in developing challenging curricula for students and training for teachers. It was an exhilarating time and under John the best job I ever had.

I learned a tremendous amount from John; he was a wonderful mentor and role model.

Two fond memories:

The first one was when I visited John in his office in the old Executive Office Building after he went to work for the President's Science Advisory Committee (PSAC). The office was two stories high and John was surrounded by columns of papers reaching the ceiling. Amazingly, he could retrieve any paper he needed from this rather chaotic filing system.

The second was our visit to John and Bibi in their lovely home in Malibu where we (my husband Al, daughter Helen and  myself) were served an elegant lunch. During our visit, John updated us about both of you -- even though I never met you, I feel I know  you just from John's proud and  fond comments about you on many occasions.

How fortunate you were to have as a father a man who contributed so much to his country and to all who knew him. You must miss him terribly.

In sympathy,

Senta Raizen