Bascom Barry Hayes

(20 May 1934 – 27 April 2025)

Bascom “Barry” Hayes, 90, died on April 27, 2025, in his longtime home of Austin. Barry, a lifelong historian, spent most of his career in education, including serving as a professor of history at Sam Houston State University from 1966 until his retirement in 1999. He is survived by his daughter, Elinor Kathryn “Kathy” Hayes Farris, and her husband, Dr. Reuben Farris, M.D. from Chula Vista, California; his sisters-in-law, Sandra Clark and Mary Nell Renteria; his niece and nephew, Keaton and Sean O’Neal; and his great-nieces, Audrey and Zoe O’Neal. He is also remembered by his dear friend, Shelley Todd Black, as well as the many other people who got to know Barry during his august years at Westminster Manor.

Born in 1934 at Methodist Hospital in Forth Worth, Barry was a sixth-generation Texan and a thirteenth-generation descendant of London and Bristol merchant mariners who pursued their business interests in Virginia and settled there during the early 1600s. Barry’s father, Dr. Bascom Beatty Hayes, was a pioneer in public education who served as head of the Education Administration at the University of Texas, where he was named Professor Emeritus until his death in 1972. Barry’s mother, Donna Loyless Hayes, was a longtime member and a past president of the Austin Women’s Club, as well as a Sunday School teacher at the First Baptist Church of Austin. Donna, who died in 2009, was also acclaimed for her uniquely beautiful eggshell mosaics and hand-crafted papier-mâché birds, which were written about in the Austin-American Statesman.

After graduating from the University of Texas with the highest honors, Barry received a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1956 to study at New York University. He lived in New York for a year, where he relished his many trips to the symphony and the Metropolitan Opera. Barry enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving both active and reserve duty before he completed his Ph.D. in history at Yale University in 1963, where his graduation speaker was President John F. Kennedy.

Following a brief stint at the University of California in Riverside, Barry returned to Texas to begin his teaching career at Sam Houston State University. It was there Barry met his beloved wife, Betty French Hayes, who was working in the English department. They married in 1967, remaining happily so until Betty’s death in 2011.

In 1994, Barry published the book Bismarck and Mitteleuropa, a study of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck. During his later years, Barry also researched and published several articles on genealogy. He remained an active member of many organizations and social groups, including Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Eta Sigma, Pi Sigma Alpa, Phi Alpha Theta, Scabbard and Blade, ATO, the American Historical Society, Order of the Descendants of Ancient Planters, Jamestown Society, Society of the Descendants of Washington’s Army at Valley Forge, and the Sons of the Republic of Texas.

A private burial service will be held this fall.