Several months ago, Maggie Washo and Jevon Daly reached out on Facebook to readers, looking to interview residents who had made it to 90 years old and beyond. Originally, the thought was to ascertain what these people had in common – if any commonalities existed. While they didn’t get exactly what they were searching for, the duo did have enjoyable conversations with lovely people who have been on this planet for a time. The dialogue veered sporadically from the price of gas and raising children to meeting celebrities, square dancing, politics, war, and the dangers of motorcycles.
What follows are snippets of these interviews.
‘Love Responds With Love’
Harrison Hays
Age: 94
Maggie Washo: What is your birthday?
Harrison Hays: April 9, 1930. My mother thought I might not be very bright, so she had me born on a decade. And then I just knew that every decade, I was 10 years more experienced. You don’t age, you just get more experience. So I have 94 years of experience.
Jevon Daly: And you’ve got my dad’s birthday.
MW: Do you realize that this is the third fire sign we’ve interviewed today?
JD: Oh, really?
MW: Yes – Evelyn was August 5 and Elizabeth was April 6. You fire signs are feisty – and you live long lives.
HH: Well, my mom was almost 101, and my dad was almost 96, and I thought well … I’ll live within that parameter. But then I found a computer game that asked me a bunch of questions and told me I was going to live to 108.
JD: Wow!
MW: Oh, my goodness!
HH: I thought “Holy mackerel!” Well, you know the good Lord left me alone until I was 92. I lived to 92 without having any real challenges. But then at 92, I started getting some balance problems. That’s why I’m in a wheelchair. See, I can give you so much advice.
MW: Oh, good! No one has wanted to give us any advice yet today.
HH: Now, when I was 87, I had this knee replaced (points to his left knee). This is a happy knee. When I was 93, my other knee started paining me because there is no cartilage in it. So my orthopedic doctor said, “Hey, I’ll put a new knee in.” My primary care doctor said, “No. You can’t do it because you may die on the operating table, you could get an infection, or you could get a blood clot that rushes to your heart and snuffs you out!” My advice is to skip your 90s – just go straight from the 80s to 100.
JD: That’s great advice.
HH: Well, the other thing that happened was when I was 93, I went innocently…
MW: Innocently.
HH: … innocently in to see my primary care doctor and she said, “You are to stop driving today!” And I asked, “Well, why is that?” She said, “Well, you’re 93!” And I noticed I started getting all these leg wounds and bruises that had to be dressed and I said to my caregiver, “Why is this happening all of a sudden? I’ve never had this issue before.” “Because you’re 93!” she said. So, I suggest going straight from 92 to 94 and skipping 93. But despite all of that, I’m not a negative person. Did you know today is terrific Tuesday?
JD: It’s becoming … it was off to a rough start for me this morning.
HH: My wife and I collaborated on this little card which reminds people to have a Marvelous Monday, a Terrific Tuesday, a Fantabulous Friday and so forth. Do you know I’ve handed out 3,000 of these cards?
JD: Oh, wow. Only 3,000 huh?
HH: Only one person has ever turned down one of my cards.
MW: Really? Why?
HH: Because she said she was a Christian.
MW: Oh. Did Jesus not accept cards?
HH: I move about 60 to 80 of these cards a week. If anyone gives me even the slightest eye connection, I’m right there with a card. And it’s amazing to me how many people really enjoy the sentiment on the cards. Especially in Beaufort where I go to get my wounds checked on. On the same floor there is the OB/GYN and the ladies that I give the cards to are all very pleased and so I think, “My golly, this little card does help and little Nancy (my wife) was the one that did that.”
MW: Little Nancy.
HH: I have a lot of fond memories of my little Nancy. People wonder why I don’t tear up. Well, I do tear up a little bit because she was just terrific. But she was just hurting so much when she died and I brought her home to hospice from the hospital. She was with me three weeks then. She was just the dearest person – you just can’t imagine somebody that good – and she put up with me. She said she never got me fully trained.
MW: Not in all those years, huh? (laughing)
HH: Not in all those years. She tried, for heaven’s sake – she tried for 67 and a half years.
JD: Married 67 years.
MW: OK, so what is your advice on staying married for 67 years?
HH: Men and women process information differently. Sometimes what can be an innocent comment by either one, gets misinterpreted and that creates consternation for a short time.
MW: Yes, it surely does.
HH: So, we just loved each other enough to overcome it – and we didn’t want to start a new history. Because if you have three or four wives – or three or four husbands – and then you have kids with each one, boy it gets complicated. So I thought, “My gosh – I can’t handle complication” (laughing).
MW: So, that’s the advice. Keep your life uncomplicated – stay married.
HH: Well, and this has rubbed off on our kids. I have 18 great-grandchildren. My wife got to hold and know 10 of them. I’ve had eight in the five years since she’s been gone.
JD: Wow.
MW: So, you have a large family.
HH: I have a huge family and I am just truly blessed. I was born in Colorado. I lived in Wyoming, Oklahoma, and Texas until I graduated high school, and then I lived in Ohio for a short time. Then Uncle Sam gave me an all-expenses-paid tour to Korea and he said “You’re going to get to see very little of South Korea but quite a lot of North Korea.”
On Thanksgiving Day in 1952, I arrived in Kumhwa and had a wonderful dinner down in the Artillery Battery. Then I went on the hill … that mountain was Hill 1060, called “Papasan,” and the North Koreans were there, so I dropped a battalion of artillery on them every day as they were going down to dinner because as you know, the job of each army was to kill each other. I flew 89 combat missions in that L-19 aircraft (Civilian Cessnan 170) right there. (Hays points to an old black and white photograph of an airplane.)
So, we did our stuff – we would fly either one or two missions every day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Two-hour missions. And if you had one mission like in the morning, in the afternoon we would fly down to what was left of Seoul, or drive a Jeep down there, and we would see an Officers Club on the way and have a meal, like a steak or something.
When you’re on the line, you get C-rations – and you get the lousy C-rations because everybody siphoned off the good ones on the way. However, my driver would bring us fresh eggs, so we did have fresh eggs up there.
MW: How many years were you there?
HH: I was there from Thanksgiving Day of ’52 until September ’53. Well, the truce was signed on July 27, and it just took that long for us to come home. An interesting thing about that was, there were just 60 of us that got to come home on the General Brewster, which was pulling duty because what we were hauling down below were 1800 repatriated prisoners of war. Some of them had been prisoners for three years.
JD: Jeez.
HH: Can you imagine what they went through? So, that was an interesting experience. The General Brewster was a very nice troop ship. When we got into rough seas off of Alaska, and one second I saw sky and 30 seconds later I saw water …
MW: OOF!
HH: … and I was feeling queasy, so I ran up to sick bay and I said, “What in the world do I do for this?” Meantime my three bunk mates are back lying in their bunks. They said take Dramamine and go up and eat all you can eat. And, man, there were 25% of us up there eating every day and the other 75% were back praying to die. But yeah, we survived.
Harrison Hays has handed out over 3000 of these cards, reminding the recipients to have a wonderful day, no matter the day.
MW: What do you attribute your old age to?
HH: Well, my mother, when she was 100, she was asked that same question by the governor’s representative in Oklahoma. He said, “Mrs. Hays, how did you get to be 100?” and she responded, “Well, it’s because I didn’t die.”
MW: This is the best answer we’ve gotten all day (laughing). Well, you were in the military, so you must have exercised a lot, yes? Would you say you have a healthy lifestyle?
HH: Well, you can see how. Look at that. (Hays points to an old photo)
MW: You look fit as a fiddle.
HH: Exercise is how you stay fit as a fiddle. Now that I’m in this silly chair, all they have me doing is riding my three-wheel bike – my trike – and the last couple of times she’s been here I’ve ridden a mile every day. I’m ready to take off, but they said, “No, somebody’s got to watch you get on and off the bike.” (Fall prevention)
I said, “Well, why?” And they said, “Because you’re 94.”
I said, “So what? At 94, what if I go three miles out towards Dolphin Head and suddenly go to Heaven? Well, that’s fine with me. The good Lord has looked over me a long time.
MW: What was the most memorable decade of your life?
HH: I think the most memorable was when I was with ITT Grinnell. We were just one of the 320 companies that made up ITT, but that’s when I got both the trips to Japan and the trips to Europe, and I got to take Nancy on one of the trips to Japan and she loved it.
I think of all the companies that I worked for, the one that I really liked was Owens Corning Fiberglass Corporation. That was my first job, but interesting because we had a kind of a patriarchal president. That was in the ’50s and ’60s, and he knew everybody and I was part of the growth of Owens Corning and I just … well, I won’t go into the reason why I left.
MW: What did you do? What was your career in?
HH: Procurement. I had a degree in marketing, but I worked in the purchasing department at the University of Oklahoma and Owens Corning was interviewing for purchasing people, so I went and was offered a job.
I was also offered a job with Continental Oil Company to go to Houston as a salesman, but I picked Owens Corning and I was glad I did because the company was $112 million in sales when I joined it, and it’s now about $6 billion a year, which is pretty good growth.
It started in 1938, and I would say the two decades when I was with Owens Corning – I was really very happy there. Then in the ’70s when I was with ITT Grinnell, I got to travel the world and that was just really fun.
MW: Other than your career, were there other memorable decades?
HH: As a kid, I was blessed in a lot of ways. My dad came off a ranch in Wyoming, got his degree, and was in the petroleum area for his career with Phillips Petroleum. During World War II, since we weren’t old enough, two cousins and I worked on Grandpa’s ranch while his sons were in the service. We were doing the haying, because he raised cattle, and we had access to quarter horses, and also teams of horses, because we didn’t have tractors there.
See, I have so many decades of just pure joy. It’s hard to pick just one.
But my six, almost seven, decades with Nancy were great because she kind of kept me straightened out. She told me, “You have the brains and I have the common sense.”
MW: Where did you meet?
HH: We met at the University of Oklahoma. I was in a fraternity, and across the street there was a sorority, and she was a lowly freshman …
MW: A lowly freshman!
HH: … and I was a mighty junior …
MW: A mighty junior?!? (laughing)
HH: … and they matched everybody up before the girls came across the street.
MW: So, Nancy was the one you were assigned? (laughing) That’s who you got stuck with?
HH: No, she got stuck with me. Nancy told me she had hoped for another freshman. (Hays laughs). My gosh, I met her in September and we were married the following August. She was just too good to pass up – I didn’t want to let her go. She was almost 20, and I was almost … let’s see, I was almost 22.
She was pregnant when I went overseas, and our first son was born on Christmas Eve, but I didn’t know until the first of January. I got a phone call from the Red Cross right after that, and they said mother and son are fine. I said, “Well, how much did he weigh?” and they said, “We have no details.” I got a letter from Nancy on New Year’s Day and found out that he was 19 inches long – and he’s now six-foot-three, and he weighed 7 pounds, 11 ounces – and now he weighs 180.
MW: So, he grew.
HH: Isn’t that something? He had four kids – well, they still have four kids, and then each of them decided, you know, God told Abraham to “go forth and populate the earth” … he took that very seriously, and each of his kids have four kids.
JD: (laughing) Wow!
HH: Now, two of them have adopted children and that’s another interesting story. One wanted to adopt, and the other wanted to foster. So, I’ve got two great-grandsons that are just delightful little kids. One was a drug baby that my granddaughter rescued, well, was with from the time he was 13 days old. She fostered him for the required year and then they got to adopt him. And the other one was a foster kid who had been in four foster homes from the time he was 6 years old. When they first got him, he didn’t want to get in the car, and they said, “Why don’t you want to get in the car? We’re going out for ice cream.” And he said, “Because every time I got in the car before, I was taken to a new home.” Isn’t that something?
MW: That’s horrible.
HH: Well, eventually he told the judge that he wanted to be a Hays. I’m delighted to have him. He’s a quarter Choctaw Indian, and his dad and mom took him to see all the ceremonies and stuff, and that was pretty special for Vinnie.
MW: How old is he?
HH: He’s 7 now.
MW: How old was the baby they adopted? Were there any residual issues from being born to an addict?
HH: I don’t think so. He’s 11 now. Here’s what happened: The parents had five kids and they didn’t want any of them.
MW: Of course, they didn’t.
HH: So, their extended family said, “After five kids, we can’t adopt anymore.” Miles was number 10, and then this woman has had two more since. So, there were seven kids adopted out and five were adopted in the family.
But gosh, Heather rocked him and sang to him every day from the time he was 13 days old until he was able to come home a month later. He was 3 before he learned how to talk. But the doctor said that they’d flushed all of the drugs out, and that he was in good shape.
JD: It’s amazing how resilient kids are.
MW: Do you have any advice for us on raising children?
HH: Well, one thing: Discipline never hurt anybody.
MW: Amen.
HH: My dad said hard work never hurt anybody.
MW: Amen twice!
HH: And so that was a good one. I would say this: While we swatted our kids with a paddle … we never did beat them.
MW: (Laughs)
HH: I do like the idea of timeouts, because it has worked with the grandchildren.
MW: Yes.
HH: And I would say, if you don’t want to love them, you shouldn’t have them. Our kids – we had more fun raising them, and they were good kids. But they were kids, and so wild things would happen, and so we’d have to have a new understanding.
MW: Yes! A new understanding (laughing). I love it.
HH: (laughing) A new understanding … so that’s how it goes. All the kids are great and somehow or another, Nancy and I love all of them. Did you know that love responds with love? Isn’t that interesting? I think that’s what keeps me on the upbeat side, with a glass half full.
That’s the other lesson, you know. The pessimistic side has a glass half empty, so you take their half empty glass and dump it in yours, and then you got a full glass.
MW: “Love responds with love.” That’s a great quote.
JD: Yeah, that’s good.
HH: I’ll tell you the other thing finally … I think I was 80 before I started getting serious about my spiritual growth, but the closer you get to Jesus Christ, the more calm you are. I haven’t been angry in I don’t know how many years. I might get slightly frustrated … but then I sit back because … I got this comment from a friend. It was on a piece of paper, and it’s Jesus talking, and he says, “Put all your worries into my basket.” So, I do that, and I don’t have to worry about them. So, there you go. Just remember to skip age 93, because you can’t drive anymore – that’s my medical advice.
MW: I’ll try to remember that.
HH: Well, I hope I haven’t bored you. I’ve been chit-chatting for quite a bit but … Oh! That was that was my nickname from Nancy, Chatty Cathy. Well, only when I talked all the time.
MW: Did you have a nickname for her?
HH: Little Nancy. She signed her anniversary cards, “Your Nancy.” We had a love affair for a long time. The first three years with her were what you call “interesting.”
JD: Hmmmm….
HH: After that it got to be good.
MW: So, your advice is skip through the first three years of marriage …
HH: We had “misunderstandings” during the first three years.
MW: Yes.
HH: Once we understood that boys and girls are different in many ways, things were better.
MW: My mom says all the time that she doesn’t even understand how men and women get together in the first place because it’s like we are speaking different languages.
HH: But I’ll tell you what – I think women and girls are very interesting.
MW: I think all men think women and girls are very interesting!
JD: I have to agree that women and girls are very interesting!
MW: I love that you loved your wife so much. That’s something that I admire in a man.
