Gotta butt into this one.

Yes, he drank raw goat's...and cow's milk.  And also ate their cheeses.

Paavo was a dear personal friend of mine.  A fabulous guy, very honest. He
helped get a lot of folks off the SAD dietary...including me.  Like Terry
Fry, he did an awful lot of good for a great many people...who otherwise
might have continued to lead sick and sorrier lives.

Paavo and I eventually disagreed severely over his dietary beliefs
(especially as I became familiar with Natural Hygienic principles), but he
stuck to what he believed, often changing his position radically...if
convinced by someone's arguments that he was wrong.  He was NOT a
hippocrite.  He advocated his lacto vegetarianism...and he lived it.

T.C. came pretty close in his commentary, but, where Paavo at least
practiced what he preached, I unfortunately can't say that much for poor
Terry...who I also knew, but not as well as Paavo.

Paavo was an extremely talented fellow.  An accomplished professional artist
and musician, both.  He was from Finland, coming to the states via Germany,
Sweden, Canada and, sometimes, Mexico.  In Sweden, he was converted to
Mormonism, and that got him his passage to Canada. His artwork was brilliant
and bought high prices in both Europe and over here.  He worked for years as
a professional performing musician in Scandinavia, all the while studying
"alternative" nutrition in order to, hopefully, recover his own poor health.

He almost died in World War II on the Russian front.  Although he obviously
recovered enough to go on, his metabolism was always askew.  He couldn't
keep a decent body temperature without avoiding drafts and dressing
warmly...one reason you'd never see him, even in warm weather, without his
hat or a coat.  Also a prime reason for his settling in Arizona...and
frequently going deep into Mexico during the winters to find both warmth and
solitude...and to do his prolific writing in the peaceful surroundings down
there.

Unknown to most folks, he had a history of cardiovascular incidents over his
entire adult life and had a sort of premonition he might check out earlier
than he wanted. In 1976 I helped cover for him when he had one of these
scary attacks, bringing him his daily rations of Cranberry juice and other
items he felt were needed to accelerate his recovery.  And recover, he did.

His personal life was a living hell.  Like T.C., he was a workaholic, and
like Fry, he also had significant marriage difficulties, being married to
the same lady (the mother of his children) twice.  He should never have
married her the second time (both his and my opinion).  He became a living
wreck in short order, the second time around...and the divorce was a first
order disaster. It was during the throes of that final divorce that his
heart began to fail again, and when I was luckily nearby to help out.

Fortunately, some years later, he met a charming gal, much younger, whom he
married.  It was beautiful.  What a change in him.  He designed and built a
large home north of Phoenix, Arizona, which was more like a magnificent art
gallery.  His colorful paintings were hung on every wall.  She almost
worshipped him...and I never saw him so happy as he was those last years
with her.

He died a far happier fellow than he had been most of his adult life. His
life ended on a serene evening walk with her not far from their home.
Sadly, I never really got to know her (I was living abroad when they
married, and then in California, so only got to see him on visits to
Arizona), but it was obvious how much they meant to each other.

He allowed that the raw dietary had much going for it...but, he pointed out
that he doubted many people could really stick to it, since no known cultures
advocated completely cookless eating.  He had, as one of his oft touted
"Airola Principles," the belief that infrequent "sinning" (dietary) was
actually good, since it sharpened the defense mechanism against diseases.

I didn't agree with him on that one, but he really believed it was an
important consideration for good health maintenance.  He felt that entirely
raw eating might be dangerous, especially, since he didn't think anyone
could stick with it exclusively...and if they did digress...it could be
traumatic enough a shock to the system to do some permanent damage.

In any event, his opinions were mostly derived from his world wide travel
experiences and first hand studies of long-lived peoples and what they
ate...and how they lived.

His beliefs were the consequence of his rigid pragmatism. He was impressed
by the hardiness of the dairy using centenarians of the Caucasus area, so he
gladly included their yogurt and other dairy items in his recommended
dietary. Needless to say, being a thoroughbred Finn, he was probably already
biased in the dairy direction anyway, since their heavy dairy consumption is
well known.

He admitted that Finish males had very short life spans, but obviously
wasn't ready to admit that heavy dairy consumption might have something to
do with this, preferring to chalk it up to the consequences of poor genetic
breeding.

Anyway, knowing him for so long and so well, I feel obligated to make sure
the record doesn't get improperly colored by something T.C. Fry might have
speculated about Paavo's early demise, since Terry knew Paavo only through
his writings, rather than personally.

Ric