Monthly Archives: August 2020

For two summers when I was in college, I worked as a materials inspector for the Kansas Department of Transportation. It was one of the few summer jobs around at that time and a place where I could do some science. I got to be honest, my dad got me the job. He was the Field Engineer Administrator for the Kansas City KDOT office. Basically, he was the big cheese.

What I’d did as a materials inspector was going to concrete plants and test the sand and gravel they were using that day for state highway jobs. I’d also have to sit in the concrete plant as long as the contractor was pouring concrete that day and check the calculations of materials the batchman used for each load of concrete. If the numbers looked good, a signed ticket was filled out and given to the driver to take to the job site.

Whenever I went to a new concrete plant, I was treated as an outcast. The inspector. Nobody really likes having an inspector hanging about their business. On top of that, I was a college student, a double whammy in the construction world. College boy. This was the greeting I walked into on a regular basis. I’d enter a plant being the enemy until they saw my last name. Hays.

“Are you Joe Hays’ boy?” always followed a few thoughtful seconds after giving my name. In the first post, I talked about how different my dad and I were physically. These workers in the plants had no clue who I was until I answered that I was, indeed, Joe Hays’s boy. 

Everything changed with that piece of information was revealed about me. I went from being the inspector to having serious credibility. All because I was Joe Hays’ boy. That’s the kind of man my dad was.

You can’t talk about my dad without talking about him as a civil engineer. He went to tiny Findlay Engineering College in Kansas City, Mo. My dad is a testament to the philosophy that it’s not where you get a degree, it’s what you do after you get your degree. He was a bridge-builder in more ways than one. He was meticulous. He knew his stuff. He was a good co-worker and a great supervisor. He distrusted computers because he saw young engineers use them as a crutch instead of as a tool. He was respected throughout his profession. Even though I’m a molecular microbiologist, I’ve tried to emulate his example in everything I do. Often, I’ll look back and try to figure out how dad did it. I think I’m starting to figure it out.

When I first started at K-State, dad would come to Manhattan every year for a civil engineering conference. Before he moved to Texas, my oldest brother, Pat, also a civil engineer, would come to the conference. I’d find an hour or so during the workday to walk across campus for a quick visit. I was always amazed to see the admiration, the camaraderie, and the way the throng of civil engineers would treat dad. He was respected. It was almost like he was ten-foot-tall when I’d seek him out in the crowded Union during a break. As we’d walk together, people would stop and say hello or ask him questions. It was pretty damn cool being his son.

What did I figure out about dad’s secret? I’m still working on that one but I think it has to do with being trustworthy and being consistent. More important, that trust and that consistency have to be built on a foundation of ethics. A moral compass and rock-solid ethics. This is what dad stood for. 

• Do the right thing at the right time and do it every, single day.

• Be the rock everyone can rely on.

Early in my microbiology career, I was struggling trying to find a foothold to stay in my career of choice in my place of choice with a young family at home. Dad was never a man of many words, especially with us kids, but he gave me something I still hang in a plastic cover in my lab today. It was a simple photocopied cartoon of a stork swallowing a frog while the frog reaches out from the beak with a stranglehold around the stork’s neck. “Never Give Up” is the caption.

A silly, somewhat stupid cartoon that was poorly photocopied made a difference. It was my dad’s way of telling me to quit whining and get back to work. Things would be okay. Things would work out. Do the right thing at the right time and do it every day. Never give up.

Growing up, I guess I never realized or even thought about Dad as a professional. He was just my dad. It wasn’t until I got to see from a first-hand viewpoint just how great he was at what he did. In life and in death, his legacy endures. He touched so many lives in a positive way. Many of these people came from near and far to tell us this fact at his funeral. Dad was a rock to many people through good times and bad times. We were lucky kids.

(NOTE: I’m writing a few memorial pieces about my Dad to celebrate his life. Part One is here. With each piece, I’ll try to post a picture that helps tell the story of who he was. Most of the time, the actual monetary value of these things is nothing. The memory value, however, is priceless.) 

The T-square. Years ago, Dad gave me his old t-square and his drafting board. These, along with his drafting tools in a purple-velvet-lined-case, are marvels from his early engineer days. He kept these things at the house, stored in his closet. Every once in awhile, he’d get them out for us to see. They were magnificent tools. We kids felt like giants whenever we got to use them.

I don’t really know why or how it came to be me who is in possession of the drafting board and the T-square but I am. He might have thought they’d come in handy for my drawing work. I just know one day, they were with a box of my memorabilia stuff he sent back west with us when we left KC. Dad never was a big arts kind of guy. He used to draw some cartoon stuff with us and was able to hermetically seal a Christ The King School textbook in a brown paper sack cover that they are probably still trying to unseal forty years later, but that was about it.

He was all about the function. Drawing for the sake of drawing was not in his DNA. It was in mine, though, and he helped me in my youth to get started creating. He was always there to help with school projects and the like. From using coffee cans as a circle template to draw planets to using the T-square and drafting board to lay out a grid to plan a drawing, he’d always get me started down the right path. Creative work is creative work and not often thought about from an engineer’s perspective. Dad taught me a lesson early on for both writing and drawing. He taught me to look at the project not only from an artist perspective from also as an engineer. Design the framework and build a creative idea around it. Simple but beautiful. 

Here’s the T-square. It hangs over my work desk. I still use it to frame up drawings and templates. It comes in handy more than one would think. Plus, it still looks pretty magnificent—even in its old age. Thanks, Dad!

If you didn’t know our family and saw my dad and I standing in close proximity, you never would never have guessed he and I were related, let alone father and son. We were different people in many ways. He was tall, light-skinned, and thin. I’m a bubba, Husky-sized, dark, and strong. He was 100% engineer. I was 100% life sciences.

(True story to illustrate our differences. Once, my sister’s dog died after being hit by a car, he put my sister’s dog into a Joe Hays sealed plastic trash bag. Me, the biologist, tried to explain decomposition and why this was a bad idea. The engineer wouldn’t listen. Later in the day, when the trash bag started to…well, you can probably guess what happened, I silently enjoyed one of the few true “victories” I’d ever enjoy over my father. Biologist over Engineer for once.) 

For all these outward differences, we are the same in the core. Honest. True. Headstrong. Resolute. Good friend/Terrible enemy. Faithful. Family. Problem-solving. Economic (and not just with money). Humorous. Plus many other things. 

In late July of 2015, he was in the hospital for a last-ditch surgery to fix his stomach. It was my turn to go to KC and help my mom and siblings. Looking back, the times I got to spend with him one on one over that summer when he was hospitalized were a gift. You don’t get much one on one time in a big family, one of the very few drawbacks of a big family, so it was special.

When I arrived at the hospital, it was transfer day. A medical transport service was scheduled to pick Dad up and take him two blocks away to the rehabilitation clinic where he’d been for most of the summer. I have to admit, Dad looked rough. He was already weak from not being able to eat for a while and the surgery to implant a feeding tube took a deep toll on him. 

During the move out of the hospital, I did the best I could to help the driver. We got Dad moved and set up in his room at the rehab center. The driver left and I thank him. He tells me he’ll leave the wheelchair there and the hospital will pick it up later. Dad settled in and I sat down. We talked for a few minutes before he fell asleep. One of the wonderful rehab center nurses came into the room, checked Dad’s charts, and then noticed me sitting in the corner. She took a quick look at the wheelchair, looked back at me, and said, “We got him from here. It’s okay to leave now.”

I stared back at her in complete confusion. I looked at the wheelchair. I looked back at the nurse. Then just about the time she is ready to call security, it dawned on me. 

She thinks I’m the guy from the medical transport company.

She thinks I’m hanging around for a tip or something. I immediately break out in a huge smile. “I’m one of Joe’s sons.” I get up and shake her hand. “I’m Mike. The fourth kid.”

Her 100% badass, this-is-my-patient-and-you-better-not-mess-with-him facade broke into shock and embarrassment. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I thought you were the—” She pointed at the wheelchair. Long story short, she apologized and I told her it was no big deal because it happened all the time. 

I had forgotten about it over the next few days of sitting with Dad in the room.

Dad died five-years-ago today. August 1, 2015. It was a Saturday. As sad as we are, our family was lucky. We got bonus time on Earth with him. Dad almost died of esophageal and stomach cancer in 1986. He had a large portion of his stomach and several inches of esophagus removed in a sort of crude surgical solution to a desperate situation. He made the most of these almost thirty bonus years. We were lucky to have this extra time. My only regret is he didn’t get to meet my grandson. Dad was an awesome grandpa. He and my grandson would have hit it off royally. 

My Uncle Ed was a priest and presided over the funeral. He called the Sunday after Dad died and asked if I’d talk at the funeral. I immediately envisioned how mad my Dad would be to have someone stand up and deliver a eulogy for him. Besides, I told my uncle, nobody wants to see a 250-lb man become a blubbering pile of emotional goo on the altar of his dad’s funeral. Anyway, Uncle Ed’s homily, where he worked in the Judgement of Osiris, was the most spectacular way anyone could have remembered my dad. It was the perfect match for the event where people came from all over to honor Joseph Hays. 

One of the best parts of the funeral for me was when that nurse from the rehab center came through the family receiving line at the front of the church. First of all, how awesome it was for these busy nurses to take time from their schedule to pay their respects to dad? When she came through, she apologized again and we told everyone the story about how she confused me with the transport worker. The assembled in the church pews must have thought we were all crazy as we laughed about the mistake. This laughter and the shared stories from the people Dad touched in his life was the perfect eulogy. Nothing any one of us kids could have said would have wielded the power of memory and tribute like the people who gathered, either in person or in spirit, at Christ The King church that August morning. Mom, his two brothers, us six kids, our spouses, his beloved grandchildren and great-grandchildren, friends, coworkers, friends of us kids, and caregivers were the true eulogy to Dad.

That is perhaps the finest lesson I learned from my father. The final lesson he left us. 

The power in a well-lived life is not what you take with you; it’s what you leave behind. 

(NOTE: Now that I might be past the 250-lb blubbering son stage, I’m writing a few memorial pieces about my Dad to celebrate his life. With each piece, I’ll try to post a picture that helps tell the story of who he was. Most of the time, the actual monetary value of these things is nothing. The memory value, however, is priceless.) 

This picture is of a wooden goalpost Dad made for us when we were kids. We loved playing paper football on the living room table. We fought a lot while playing. The recurring argument that usually resolved into a full-out brawl across the living room carpet, was cheating (mostly by Tim Hays) making a goal post for the opponent with your fingers. One could slightly adjust the width of your goal and/or slightly move it before, during, or after someone “kicked” a field goal or extra point.

They say that necessity is the mother of invention so Dad invented. With six kids within a dozen years of each other, we can say that he invented often. A piece of plank board, some dowel rod, felt on the bottom to avoid scratching Mom’s coffee table, and a few hours work yielded virtual fight-free hours of paper football joy for the Hays Boys.

That’s who my dad was.