How I Came to Meet James Bond

 How I Came to Meet James Bond - William Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com 

It was in the course of my JFK Assassination research when I came across the real James Bond. It must have been some November anniversary, probably around 1973-5, when Philadelphia Magazine ran a story of the Philadelphia connections to the assassination. 

The late great Alan Halpern was the editor then, and his protege Gaeton Fonzi was off to Washington or Florida working for Sen. Richard Schweiker and the Church Intelligence Committee and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations, so the article was written by another good investigative reporter Michael Malowe. 

Warren Commission lawyers William Coleman and Arlen Spector were both from Philadelphia, as was later HSCA chief counsel Richard Sprague. Then living there at the time were Ruth Paine, Michael Paine's mother Ruth Forbes Paine and her husband Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, as well as Priscilla Johnson, critics professor Joshia Tink Thompson, film buff Robert Groden and my old college mate John Judge. 

As I was born and raised across the Delaware River in Camden, NJ, I often visited Judge, who worked at a Quaker center on Walnut Street near Rittenhouse Square and lived in a Germantown mansion with two other former University of Dayton school mates, where we would listen to Mae Brussell "World Watcher" radio broadcast tapes. 

One of John's jobs at the Quaker center was to call supporters on the phone and ask for donations, and one day he told me he called Ruth Paine and she made a donation. 

The Philadelphia magazine article in question included an interview with Ruth Paine, but it also somehow connected her to a mysterious foundation - the Catherwood Foundation, which was connected to the CIA. 

The book The Invisible Government (Wise and Ross) exposed the CIA's foundation system for financing covert operations, listing the Catherwood Fund among a dozen or so others. Double agent Kim Philby, in his book My Sikent War, related how while he was the British SIS liason to the CIA Frank Wisner explained to him how rich Americans were convinced to establish foundations and funds the CIA could funnel their money through, so it was a secret only kept from the American people.

So I did what I routinely do when I come across a new name and went to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin archives, called the morgue, where I looked up Cartherwoods file.

The Bulketin paid old ladies tjo clip every story, circle each name mentioned, and place the clipping in an envelope with that person's name on it, that was fiked in metal cabinets alphabetically.

Cummins Catherwood's envelope was bulging with clips that I took over to a nearby table to read. It was late at night so few people were around but the editor Tom Flynn came over and asked what I was working on.

As a millionaire who inherited his millions from a family munitions industry, his CIA work clearly stood out, as the Catherwood Fund backed the Cuban Aid Relief, established to support anti-Castro Cuban professionals in exile.

Catherwood also used his tax exempt Fund to have a large sailing yacht built, the Vigilant, that in 1948, he took four scientists to Caribbean out islands, one of whom studied mollusks, another was "James Bond, whose main interest is birds."

At first I thought it was a joke, a CIA agent using James Bond as an alias, but then looked at the date- 1948, and realized it was before Ian Fleming made James Bond the world's most famous spy.

With that I packed it in, and put Catherwoods envelop back in the filing cabinet and went over to visit a friend, WMMR radio news man Bill Vitka. Sitting listening to records and sipping wine, I told him about Catherwood and Janes Bond, and he recalled reading an interview with Ian Fleming in which he said he took the James Bond name for 007 from a Philadelphia ornithologist.

Later, when I returned to the Bulletin clipping morgue, I took out the envelope labeled Bond, James, and confirmed Vitka's memory.

The one and only real James Bond is the Philadelphia ornithologist who wrote the field guide Birds of the West Indies, a copy of which I obtained from the Princeton Antique Book shop in Atlantic City.

I obtained Bond's address at Hill House in Chestnut Hill, a suburb of Philadelphia from the public phone directory, and while John Judge waited in the car, walked up to that apartment building next to the train station. 

When I told the door man-security guard I was visiting James Bond, he directed me to the elevator and said his apartment was on the 10th floor 1007. Ha, another coincidence.

I nocked on the door, my copy of his book in my hand, and when Mrs. Bond answered, I held it up and asked if Mr. Bond would sign my copy of his book. She invited me in, and called out, "Jimmy!, there's a young man here to see you."

Jimmy, I thought, was a real American and not the prim and proper English James.

Mr. Bond emerged from a back room wearing a tuxedo, much as his Hollywood namesake wore. They were going out that night to attend a charity ball, he explained, and said, "Let's see what you have here- an early first edition on which he enshrined, "To Bill Kelly, good birding, - James Bond."

At the Bond's invitation I returned a few more times, purchased and read Mrs Bond's books - "How 007 Realy Got His Name," "Far Afield in the Caribbean," and "To James Bond, With Love."