Donna Katherine Loyless Hayes

Born on December 26, 1909 in Burleson, Johnson County, Texas to Albert Hendon Loyless (1884-1970) and Myrtle Mabel Robbins (1886-1979), Donna died at Westminster Manor of Austin on December 29, three days after her 100th birthday. Donna was also predeceased by her husband of fifty years, Dr. Bascom Beatty Hayes (1908-1981), Professor Emeritus of Educational Administration and former Chairman of the Department of Educational Administration at the University of Texas, and his parents James Ernest Hayes (1880-1954) and Olive Ethel Driskell Hayes (1881-1952) of Mansfield. Surviving her are her son, Dr. Bascom Barry Hayes of Lakeway, former graduate dean of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville where he retired as a Professor of European History; her daughter-in-law, Betty French Hayes, who taught English composition and literature at Sam Houston; her granddaughter, Elinor Kathryn Hayes Seney, a hospital administrator in San Diego, California; and six of fourteen first cousins—Mrs. Maude Marion Robbins Alexander of Houston; Dr. Horace Taylor Robbins of Seabrook; Mrs. Frances Jo Robbins Fletter of Ogden, Utah; Miller Brister of Waco; Mrs. Dianne Hodge Cooner of Willis; and Mrs. Cecelia Hodge Green of Greenville. Two years before Donna was born, her father joined her uncle, Dr. Elisha Freeman Robbins, Jr., in establishing the Loyless-Robbins Pharmacy in Burleson. Dr. Robbins had introduced his sister Myrtle to his future brother-in-law in a German class at Baylor University in 1905. All three had philosophy courses with the late Dr. Frederick Eby who many years later at the University of Texas taught both Donna's husband and son. Some of Donna's relatives served Baylor as administrators and faculty members; and several of her uncles, aunts, and cousins were Baylor alumni. After Dr. Robbins moved to Houston in 1910 and made a significant contribution to the development of the medical complex on South Main, the Burleson family business became known as the Loyless Interurban Drugstore, as the North Texas Traction Company contracted with Donna's father to sell tickets for the trolley that ran from Fort Worth through Burleson to Cleburne. The Loyless establishment is now a public museum to which Donna and her son contributed some of the original furnishings and various artifacts. Upon completing the tenth grade at Burleson High School in 1925, Donna attended Central High School in Forth Worth (the name later changed to Paschal High). After her graduation in 1926, she entered Texas Woman's College (now Texas Wesleyan) where she majored in piano and graduated with honors in 1929. During her senior year, she lived in the home of her major professor, Dr. Karl Venth, the German violinist, pianist, composer, and director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Venth's original compositions were donated some forty years ago to the University of Texas by his widow Cathinka, with Donna's encouragement. Following her graduation, Donna was invited to teach piano and public school music and to direct the student choir at Merkle High School. When the Merkle schools closed in 1930 due to the Great Depression, she pursued post-graduate study in piano at Washington University in St. Louis. She returned to Burleson where she taught piano and pursued her other artistic interests. Donna and Bascom married on 23 December 1930 in Burleson. Their mutual friend, the late Oma Ellen Cahill Hitt, had introduced them a few years earlier. Bascom and Oma Ellen's husband, the late J. Warren Hitt, would serve together as officers during the formative years of the Texas Education Agency. After graduating from Trinity University in 1927, Bascom became a public school teacher in Donna's hometown but in 1929 moved from Burleson to nearby Everman where he was the high school principal when he and Donna took their vows. After the Everman schools closed in 1931 during the depths of the Depression, he and Donna moved to Edna. He was the high school principal there from 1931 to 1933 when he became the superintendent of the Edna Independent School District. In 1948, he was chairman of the legislative committee of the Texas State Teachers' Association and lobbied for the passage of the Gilmer-Aiken School Bills that led to the establishment of the Texas Education Agency. In 1949-50, he took a leave of absence from the Edna schools to work in the Control Commission that supervised the transition from the old State Department of Public Instruction to the new Agency. He left the responsibility for overseeing the Edna schools to Donna as interim superintendent. One of her accomplishments in that role was overseeing the end to segregated Hispanic elementary education and moving the formerly "Latin American" school to the high school campus where the building was converted into an agricultural education center. During the nineteen years in Edna, the Hayes family had a wide circle of friends throughout Jackson County where Bascom was reputed to have had the keys to most of the ranch gates for his hunting forays. These ventures led Donna to learn the art of preparing goose, duck, quail, and dove for the dinner table. Some of her most memorable hours came after evening feasts when she would play the piano for her family and guests. She also gave many recitals that displayed her love and mastery of the compositions of Brahms, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Paderewski, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, and especially Chopin. Donna's public service on behalf of the Edna community was extensive. Long before her year as acting superintendent, she had organized the Edna High School Drum and Bugle Corps that eventually evolved into the high school band that she directed during the Second World War. She had many piano students, taught public school music, and directed the high school choir. She was the organist for her church and taught in the Sunday School. The family moved to Austin in August 1950 when Bascom became the director of administrative services in the new Texas Education Agency. He was appointed the assistant commissioner for administrative affairs after completing the doctorate in 1954 at the University of Texas where he taught from 1952-54 and also served as executive secretary of the State School Board Association, of which he was a founder. After serving as superintendent of the Brazosport public schools from 1957 to 1960, he and Donna returned to Austin where he joined the faculty at the University of Texas. Donna found many new opportunities to display her talents in Austin. She continued to teach piano and to give piano and organ recitals in Austin and other Texas communities. She joined the Wednesday Morning Music Club in 1952 and accompanied Austin vocalists at a variety of social and cultural events. One musical performance she remembered most fondly. In 1952, she played in the twenty-one piano concert at old City Auditorium under the direction of Ezra Rachlin. After an injury to her right hand in 1970, Donna turned to other artistic venues. One was sculpting in paper mache. Her mache bird collection is quite large and impressive. On March 21, 1971, the Austin American Statesman published an article about her technique that was entitled "Birds are Created with Accuracy by Arts and Crafts Expert." Donna also experimented with the Chinese paper plant in creating artificial plants and flowers. The production of collages, some from autumn leaves and others from seashells, was another venue. Her most innovative and acclaimed art work was in eggshell mosaics. Mr. Brad Buchholz of the Statesman published an article on July 27, 2004 about her method and included pictures in color of some of her productions. She donated one such creation, a replica of the stained glass window in the First Baptist Church of Austin, for the chapel at Westminster Manor where she lived her last years. There her apartment was open to visitors who viewed her eggshell representations of the Texas Capitol, the Alamo, the University of Texas Tower, LaGuna Gloria, the North-Evans Renaissance Chateau in the Bremond District, and many other mosaics. Over the past fifty years, garden clubs, service organizations, sororities, and literary clubs invited Donna to speak about arts and crafts and to present her work. Her community service in Austin is noteworthy. In 1952, with the blessing of her pastor and a longtime family friend and neighbor, Dr. Carlyle Marney, she organized at First Baptist Church a Sunday School Class that she taught for fifty years. She always fondly remembered that her son had Dr. Marney as an adviser and mentor and that Marney would preach to him one Sunday in 1960 at the Battell Chapel of Yale University. Donna was active in the Women's Missionary Union that she served as president during the late 1970s. She attended the annual Deacons' Banquet, as her husband and her father, both for over fifty years, were Deacons. In 1960, Donna joined the Austin Woman's Club and was elected president in 1974. She had been the oldest surviving past-president for several years before her death. Some twenty years ago, the Club made her the permanent honorary historian and an honorary life-member. She published the Austin Woman's Club handbook, a history of the Club, and a history of "the evolution of the North-Evans Home," the nineteenth-century Italian Renaissance mansion that the Club acquired almost a century ago and where it holds its weekly meetings and sponsors various charitable, cultural, and social events. In 1970, she became the "Newcomer Sponsor" for the wives of new faculty members in the University Ladies Club. In 1975, the City appointed Donna to the local Bicentennial Committee; for her work, she received a Certificate of Recognition from Mayor Jeffrey Friedman. In 1981, she joined the Pathfinder's Literary Club, one of the oldest such organizations in Texas, and served as its president in 1984. She was named the official historian of the University Wives Social Club in 1997. As an eleventh-generation American and fifth-generation Texan, Donna became a family historian. She was a member of the Jamestowne Society, Order of Descendants of Ancient Planters, Colonial Dames, Daughters of the American Revolution, and Daughters of the Republic of Texas. She published several genealogical works, including the essay about her great-grandfather, Judge Redding Jefferson Loyless (1808-1870), that won the history award of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in 1994. An abstract of the Hendon family letters of her great-grandparents is deposited in the Texas State Archives. Donna donated to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Center at the University of Texas the papers of her grandfather John Henry Loyless (1849-1912) who joined his uncle John Scott of Goliad County on the first cattle drives along the Chisholm Trail to Kansas; this collection of documents included his contracts, adorned with drawings of the cattle brands of his clients, that included E. R. Lane; Mathis, Coleman, and Fulton of Rockport; Peninsula Cattle Company of Aransas County; the Aransas County Pasture Company; and others. Donna left among her effects an unpublished manuscript of some 150 pages entitled "Chronicles from a Diary." She kept many diaries over a seventy-year period, and from these she drew the material for this memoire that contains a wealth of material on the history of public education and the social and cultural life of Texas. The references in the "Chronicles" to her daughter-in-law Betty and her family show that after the deaths of Bascom in January 1981 and of Betty's father John Wesley French of Trinidad, Texas less than two months later, Donna was "adopted" as a member of the French family by Betty's mother Margaret Milliken French, now also deceased, and Betty's sisters, Mrs. Mary Nell French Renteria of Kemp and Mrs. Sandra French Clark of Beaumont, and niece Mrs. Keaton Clark O'Neal of Austin. The Hayes family is most grateful to those who meant so much to Donna during her last years of impaired vision and other infirmities. Especially loved and appreciated are her friend and adviser Sarah Roebuck, her friends and colleagues in the Austin Woman's Club (of whom Dr. Margaret Berry, Mrs. Louise Kennedy, Mrs. Maureen Kocurek, and Miss Jane Smoot shared with her many happy moments over many years), and the family of First Baptist Church of Austin (among whom she enjoyed many friendships and especially the Reverend Dr. Roger Paynter, the Reverend Dr. Douglas Keenan, and the Minister of Music Louise Avant). The fine staff at the Westminster Manor Health Care Unit were relentless on her behalf, and her family will never forget the loyal devotion and assistance of her aides, especially Mrs. Flora Arismendez, her daughter Diana Arismendez, and others from the Austin Med-Team and the A-Med Community Hospice. Those wishing to honor Donna are encouraged to make their contributions to the Austin Woman's Club. The visitation at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home on North Lamar will be from 2:00-4:00 P.M. on Sunday, January 3. The burial service will be at Austin Memorial Park Cemetery on Hancock at 10:30 A.M. on Monday, January 4; the public is invited. Staff members of the Funeral Home will have charge of the burial, although Donna requested that the following be mentioned as Honorary Pallbearers, some undoubtedly to be in absentia: Miller Brister, Frank Cooksey, Bill Cooner, Lester Eisenbeck, Jack Goodman, Dr. William Gamel, J. L. Green, Roland Johnson, Dr. Horace Robbins, Dr. Ross Rost, Don Searles, and Rogers Wilson. A memorial service will follow at First Baptist Church of Austin at 2:00 P.M.