Golden Couples of the Palisades

JOHN & JANE FAHEY – 1954

(Editor’s note: (Editor’s note: Since launching our Golden Couples series in March 2002, we have featured 70 Pacific Palisades couples who have been married more than 50 years. Eligible couples who haven’t yet contacted the Palisadian-Post are encouraged to send an e-mail to Bill Bruns (editor@palipost.com) providing the date of their marriage and a phone contact. One of our reporters will call to gather information for a short profile, and a favorite photograph. Currently, George and Wilma Tauxe, married in Glendale on August 29, 1936, have the town’s longest marriage. They are closely followed by Robert and Betty Lou Frick, married March 30, 1937.) When John Fahey was an intern at New York’s Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in 1952 and Jane Bishop was a supervisory nurse on the night shift, it was inevitable that they would meet at the midnight coffee breaks in the cafeteria. Also, a fellow intern knew that both had lived previously in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and prompted John to see if they had mutual friends and interests. Jane was a beautiful, very intelligent and talented young woman with accomplishments as artist and chef, extensive knowledge and experience in camping, backpacking and wildlife, and interests in theatre and music of many kinds (John introduced her to jazz). Together they made quite a dance pair! Cleveland was not a factor, although when they were 9 years old they had lived only two blocks apart on the same street. After John moved to Washington, D.C., to resume biomedical research at the newly opened Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), his colleagues in New York warned him that he had better act or lose Jane to one of the doctors now courting her there. John did, and they were married in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York on June 12, 1954. Following a honeymoon in Jamaica and Haiti, they settled into an ancient Georgetown apartment. That was a big change from the large bachelor house in Georgetown, which John had lived with six other fellows’State Department, CIA, congressional staff lawyers and journalists, definitely not scientific or medical careerists. However, in the next two years, Jane met and became friends with the wives of the fellows, who had graduated by marriage earlier from the ‘N Street’ house. In due course the Faheys moved to suburban Chevy Chase, Maryland. Marguerite was born in 1955, James in 1956, and Catharine in 1959. In September 1959 they exchanged houses with a family in Highgate, London, and John had a year’s sabbatical at the National Institute for Medical Research in Mill Hill, England. The family explored much of England and Scotland and visited friends in Stockholm, Copenhagen and Paris. In 1971, although they were reluctant to leave the Washington, D.C., area, John took a position as chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the UCLA School of Medicine, where he continues as a faculty member. The move to California was eased by finding a home in the Huntington Palisades with the help of longtime residents Bill and Jane Huntington. The Faheys have remodeled and remained at the same address near Corpus Christi Church. Jane had her first symptoms of MS in 1970 and has found the Palisades climate and people to be very congenial. In recent years, many residents see her waving greetings from her wheelchair en route to the village and Sunset West, or to the Palisades Barber Shop for John’s haircuts, to the bank, market, restaurants or Harrington’s Camera for the prints that fill their many photo albums. Jane attends the Palisades Woman’s Club meetings and participates in a Santa Monica singing group. She remembers the words to most Christmas carols and all the songs from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s that she and John danced to. John currently travels to India several times yearly to work with the faculty at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences and other leading medical institutions. Each year, he brings half a dozen academic physicians from medical schools and research institutes in developing countries to work with him at UCLA, and learn from him about immunology and AIDS research. Jane meets and remains in contact with John’s many professional associates. They have traveled together in Kenya and Tanzania, Europe, Ireland, Canada and Alaska, the Panama Canal and Japan since Jane developed MS. Meanwhile, the Faheys enjoy the L.A. Philharmonic and opera, the new Disney Hall, UCLA basketball and occasional Dodger games. They frequent the parks, museums, gardens, good restaurants and interesting destinations in Southern California and the vineyard areas of the Central Coast. Their children organized a 75th birthday with numerous family and friends five years ago. This year’s 50th wedding anniversary in June and 80th birthdays for both in September, were smaller-scale celebrations at home. Children and grandchildren include Marguerite and her daughter, Allison, who live in West Los Angeles; James and his wife Kaoru and their two children, Cassidy and Audrey, who live in Tarrytown, New York; and Catharine, who lives in Boulder, Colorado. When asked about their long and happy marriage, Jane said with a big smile that it was certainly worth it. John said, ‘I knew that there were many unknown changes ahead, but we took them as they came.’ They agreed that imagining how and where they would be in 2004 was quite impossible until they had experienced the past three decades in the Palisades.