Jimmy Borges’ liver cancer returned about a year ago and spread to his lungs. He said his cancer doctor told him late last month that patients with cancer similar to his are largely beyond treatment.

“I was born in paradise and I’m leaving in paradise,” said Hawaii’s 80-year-old jazz ’n’ pops singer Saturday in a phone call. “Don’t feel sorry for me. I’ve had a wonderful life and would not trade it for any other. Life is great. I did what I set out to do, to have people pay to see me sing.

“At 80 years old I was able to complete my first album and headline a Honolulu Pops Concert with my lungs filled with cancer. I had to revise the arrangements as I could not hold the notes as long as I used to. It was mind over matter.”

Jimmy says he is not down about the medical news and is extremely proud that the Jimmy Borges Memorial Scholarship is being established. Organizers are former Hawaiian Electric President Robert Clarke, former First Hawaiian Bank chief Walter Dods and PBS Hawaii President Leslie Wilcox. Jimmy said he wants to be an inspiration to anyone undergoing serious medical problems and for young people hoping to make it in show business.

The scholarship announcement was made at a filmed event at the PBS Hawaii studio Thursday, when Jimmy revealed his medical condition to those present.

“I didn’t want my condition announced earlier because I did not want pity,” he said.

The audience was made up of people contributing to the scholarship. He was backed by pianist Dan Del Negro, drummer Noel Okimoto, bassist Bruce Hamada and Mike Lewis on trumpet. “We rehearsed one hour before the event,” Jimmy said.

I discovered Jimmy for local audiences back in 1968 when I was entertainment editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and he was singing in San Francisco. A picture from the Associated Press wound up on my desk. The caption read that it was a picture of a singer named Jimmy Borges from Honolulu who will be on “The Jonathan Winters Show.” I had never heard of a singer by that name, so I asked the AP to put me in contact with him. The agency did, and I contacted him and wrote about him.

He told me he left Saint Louis School when his family moved to the Bay Area when he was 12. When he came home to Honolulu in 1970, we got together, became golf partners and have been close friends ever since.

Jimmy and his dear wife, Vicki, attended all my birthday parties, and he sang at and even emceed most of them. We discuss football nearly every week: Marcus Mariota, the San Francisco 49ers, the University of Hawaii and top NFL games. He told me we have something else in common: “We love to be surrounded by beautiful women.”

We both laughed.

When he gave me the news to break about his liver cancer in 2011, it hit me hard. When he told me a couple of months ago about the cancer coming back and going into his lungs, that was awful. He asked me not to reveal it until he gave the OK.

On Jimmy’s swell new album, titled simply “Jimmy Borges,” the last song is “Aloha ‘Oe.” One of Jimmy’s many fans is Waters Martin. At the October European Cinema Gala at the Moana Surfrider, Waters came up to me and said he was troubled by “Aloha ‘Oe” (“Farewell to Thee”) being Jimmy’s final song. I told Jimmy about it, and he said Waters was right, as it was a way to say goodbye, as was Jimmy singing “My Way” at the Nov. 28 Pops concert.

Jimmy said he will be cremated, with ashes spread into the ocean and some sprinkled near the wahine statue in front of the Blaisdell Concert Hall, venue for many of his performances. He said he will have services in a Catholic church and at Kawaiaha‘o Church to pay homage to his Hawaiian bloodline.

“I’m very proud to be part-Hawaiian,” he said.

Ben Wood, who sold newspapers on Honolulu streets in World War II, writes of people, places and things. Email him at bwood@staradvertiser.com.