Donna C. Hays

Donna Andrews Hays died on November 3rd, 2021. She was 96, and joins her husband Winston “Tuck” Hays and her youngest son Tom in the hereafter. She is survived by the couple's oldest son Glenn, middle son Mark and grandchildren Alex, Andy, Chelsea, Matt and Michael, and great grandchildren Ryan, Brianna, Tyler, Brayden, Catalina and Theodore. Her nephew Tim and daughter in law Peggy were very close to her.

Her funeral will be held 20 November 2021 at 2:00 PM at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, followed by a graveside service at Oddfellows Cemetery

One of the biggest challenges of her life was raising her three sons, when her husband was away on long deployments as a Merchant Marine officer. She enjoyed playing cards and taught many of her grandchildren how to play canasta and spite and malice. She was a wiz at solving crossword puzzles, loved solitaire, and rocking with a grandchild on her lap, what she called “lap time.” For years she would help organize her class reunions for Olympia Highschool. A longtime state employee, Donna worked for OSPI where she met her best friend Bev Hermanson.

Donna was politically active, the first decades of her life as a “Dan Evans Republican,” and after the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings, as a “Clinton Democrat.” If you visited her house in the last few years, you could expect to hear the Rachel Maddow show at full volume.

A member of Olympia’s Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Donna, was born and raised in Olympia. What is today’s Olympia Little Theater, was previously her father’s autoshop. Donna was a lifetime member of the Washington State Pioneer Association, and a descendant of the first settlers to our state from a family reaching back six generations in our community, and before that to the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, making her a descendant of one of America’s oldest European families.