Rev. T.W. Hayes: Living a Life Without Pretense
“I don’t know if I’d want a chance to do life over again. I don’t know if I’d do as well. I’ve tried to live above pretense and sham. For you know, I have to live with myself. So I want to be fit for myself to know.”
I recently uncovered a 1970 recording of my great grandfather, Rev. T.W. Hayes. I was just 15 when I put the recorder in front of this gentle man. He was 79. He passed away two years later.
Quoting from a poem by Edgar Guest called “Myself” the words grandpa spoke 51 years ago were wise and cogent. They touched my inner soul. A Baptist minister and farmer, he reflected on the life he’d lived, “I want to be fit for myself to know…I never can hide myself from me. I see what others may never see.” At the time I didn’t have an appreciation for the wisdom of grandpa’s words. If I had, I might have lived my own life differently.
“I don’t know if I’d want a chance to do life over again. I don’t know if I’d do as well. I’ve tried to live above pretense and sham. For you know, I have to live with myself. So I want to be fit for myself to know.
“I want to be able as the days go by, I’ll always look myself in the eye.
“I don’t want to stand with the setting sun and hate myself for the things I’ve done.
“I don’t want to keep a closet shelf full of a lot of secrets about myself. Fool myself as I come and go, thinking nobody else would know, the kind of man I really am. I don’t want to dress myself up in sham.
“I want to go out with my head erect. I want to deserve all men’s respect. So here in the struggle for fame and pelf, I want to be able to like myself.
“I don’t want them to think I’m a bluster and a bluff, an empty soul. I never can hide myself from me. I see what others may never see.
“I know what others may never know. I never can fool myself, and so, whatever happens I want to be, self-respecting and conscience free.”
Thomas Walter Hayes was born in Rocky Hill, Arkansas, in 1892. He was my grandmother Lillian Harness’ father. He grew up on a 160 acre homesteaded farm on a mountainside near Archey Creek. When he married Sallie Mae Miller in 1909, he inherited 40 acres from his father. Through a purchase and homesteading they expanded it into a 240 acre farm. Living off the land they sometimes had trouble making ends meet but they lived as well as most people in the community because they always had some livestock or produce to sell.
In 1924 grandpa was ordained to preach in the Convention Baptist Church in Lexington, Arkansas. He also preached in other churches in the surrounding area.
Granny and Grandpa Hayes lived in Arkansas most of their lives but they moved to Red Bluff, California, for a short time to be close to the side of the family that had migrated west. I idolized Granny Hayes but only knew grandpa from a distance. He was a serious man with a ready laugh. I was to young to remember him preaching at my grandparent’s Baptist church in Red Bluff.
Grandpa Hayes died on June 28, 1973 in Conway, Arkansas, with no regrets.
“I don’t know if I’d want a chance to do life over again. I don’t know if I’d do as well.”
