Donald Hayden

Husband of one, father of two and educator of thousands, Dr. Donald E. Hayden of Tulsa, Okla. passed away Sunday, Jan. 6, 2013 at Saint Simeon's care facility at the age of 97.

Mr. Hayden was born on August 28, 1915. He was a native of Blairstown, Missouri, a farming community east of Kansas City. He was the third of three sons born to Frank Langston Hayden and Georgia May (Jefferson) Hayden.

While in high school there, he saw his future wife - who had begun a teaching career there - at a baseball game in which he was a catcher. Following graduation, he attended the University of Missouri at Columbia where he earned his bachelor and master degrees.

After an eight-year courtship, he and the woman - Mary Frances Dick - were married on Sept. 12, 1939 at the First Christian Church of Warrensburg, Missouri. After a honeymoon trip the couple settled in Syracuse, New York where he worked on a Ph.D. While there, a son - Donald E. Hayden Jr. - was born on August 5, 1940. In 1942, the family of three moved to Portland, Maine where father held a teaching position as head of the English Department at Westbrook Junior College (an all-girls school). In addition to his teaching role, he took jobs as an inspector at the South Portland Shipyard, overseeing work on various naval vessels during World War II and as a deliveryman on a milk route.

On November 20, 1943, a daughter - Elizabeth Ann - was born. In 1947 the family moved to Tulsa where he began a long career with the University of Tulsa, first as a professor of English and later as Dean of Liberal Arts and was credited with being the "principal architect" of the internationally known Graduate Faculty of Modern Letters.

In addition to his endeavors at TU, he was heavily involved in affairs of the City of Tulsa including race relations of the 1950s and 1960s. He was chairman of the Tulsa Commission for the United Nations, chairman of the Tulsa Community Relations Commission, vice president of the National Conference of Christians and Jews (NCCJ) as well as president of the Tulsa Psychiatric Foundation. A Wordsworth scholar, he authored "After Conflict, Quiet - a Study of Wordsworth (1951) and along with fellow professor, Dr. E. Paul Alworth, edited "Classics in Semantics" in 1965. He also was the author of a series of five monograph publications from the University of Tulsa documenting travels of Wordworth in the British Isles and Europe. At age 96 his interest in Wordsworth led to his developing a website based on these monographs - www.wordworthstravels.com. He also was instrumental in the creation of the TU chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

He was preceded in death by his wife in 2001 and son-in-law Chris Miller in 2005.

Survivors in addition to his son, Don, Jr. and his wife, Jane Ruth and daughter, Elizabeth, are four grandchildren - Mark Hayden Turner of Norway, Maine; Rellan David Turner of Portland, Maine; Christopher Miller II and his wife Lisa of Norway, Maine and Sarah Miller and her husband Allen Walker of Auburn, Maine and four great-grandchildren, Leif and Beck Walker and Madelaine and Grady Miller.