Necrology

Robert U. Hayes, Jr. '39

Sep. 4, 1917-Apr. 2, 2007

Robert U. Hayes, Jr. ’39, who retired after more than 40 years as a banker, was born on September 4, 1917, in Syracuse, NY. The elder son of Robert U., Class of 1905, president of the family-founded Hayes National Bank in Clinton, and Elise Millard Hayes, he was a nephew of Earl W. Anibal ’08. He grew up in Clinton and came up the Hill in 1934 as a graduate of Clinton High School. He joined his father’s fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon, and demonstrated his athletic prowess in the hockey rink and on the soccer field, lettering in both sports. A “demon on the ice” as a wingman, he captained Hamilton’s hockey team in his senior year.

After receiving his B.S. degree in 1939, Bob Hayes began his long commercial banking career at the Oneida National Bank & Trust Co. in nearby Utica. He was with the bank when, on May 17, 1941, he and Virginia Y. Eckert were married in that city. By December, however, Bob Hayes was in uniform, having enlisted in the U.S. Army the month Pearl Harbor was attacked. Commissioned as an officer in the Quartermaster Corps, he was sent overseas to Northern Ireland and then England. Assigned to the Mediterranean theater in 1942 and promoted to first lieutenant, he served in North Africa, Corsica, and Italy, principally as a company commander in an air service group.

Bob Hayes left the Army Air Forces as a major in late 1945, after World War II’s end, and returned to the Oneida Bank, where he became assistant vice president. In 1957, he accepted an assistant vice presidency at the Hanover Bank (later Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co.) in New York City and relocated to Darien, CT. Six years later, he joined the Berkshire Bank & Trust Co. in Pittsfield, MA, as executive vice president. His final career move, in 1965, was to the Albany, NY, area, where he became administrative vice president in charge of the trust division of the National Commercial Bank and Trust Co. He was promoted to executive vice president in charge of the bank’s marketing division in 1972. For the last eight years until his retirement as senior vice president in 1982, he was with the bank’s parent company, Key Corp., as an advance man engaged in solicitations and negotiations in connection with bank acquisitions as part of Key Corp.’s tremendous expansion at that time. During his career, he also completed graduate programs in banking and management at Rutgers and Northwestern universities.

Bob Hayes was active over the years in numerous community endeavors on behalf of charitable organizations in the Albany area, and, as an avid golfer, was a member of local country clubs. He also served on several boards, including the Oystermen’s Bank on Long Island and his family’s Hayes Bank (now NBT Bank) in Clinton, as well as Five Rivers Limited, a citizens’ environmental support group. A devoted Hamilton alumnus and great admirer of his old hockey coach, Albert I. Prettyman, he took a particular interest in the Continentals’ athletic fortunes and chaired the athletic committee while a member of the Alumni Council. During the 1950s he also served as the Council’s athletic advisor.

Besides golf, Bob Hayes’ enjoyed downhill and cross-country skiing, and continued even in his later years to put on his ice skates occasionally. The official “yard man” around the suburban Albany homes where he lived at various times, he also enjoyed getting away to Florida. Wherever he happened to be, however, he maintained his posture of “being too light for heavy work and too heavy for light work.”

Robert U. Hayes, Jr., who last resided in Slingerlands, died on April 2, 2007, while hospitalized in Albany, in his 90th year. Predeceased by his wife in 1999, he is survived by a son. Peter E. Hayes; two daughters, Barbara Muhlfelder and Nancy (Nikki) Vierne; three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren; and his brother, Gordon M. Hayes ’41.

 

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