A Day for Fay:Longtime educator will be honored

By Rita Howell
She taught half of the students who came through South Panola High School from 1968 to 1988. If you had Fay Hayden for Junior English during those years…and even if you didn’t…you’re invited to a reception in her honor Sunday.
It’s really a send-off for the longtime educator and community volunteer, who is moving to Rowlett, Texas, in the Dallas area, with her daughter and son-in-law, Lily Fay and Martin Young.
“It’s the logical thing to do,” Hayden, 87, said last week. “We’ll be 16 minutes from my granddaughter, Hayden.”
She’ll also be close to grandson Andrew who lives in the area, too.
Embarking on such a move might unsettle some, but the retiree sees it as “following the yellow brick road.”
Sorting through and packing up 60 years’ worth of life’s accumulations, Hayden has been reminded of the career she spent at SPHS.
“I started in 1968 and taught in the same room for 20 years,” she said.
She remembers making her career choice when she was about four.
“I would line my dolls up in the window seat and teach them,” she recalled, smiling. “That was to become my vocation.”
From early on, Hayden had a love for the printed word, even before she could read.
“My mother read to me every night,” she said. “We even saved the Sunday comics, because they were in color, and she’d read those to me all week.”
To her young eyes, words in black ink on a white page looked like prints made by chicken’s feet, she said, but she still remembers the wonder she’d felt when she learned to interpret the “chicken print” as intelligible words, “and I could read them myself.”
“Dime-a-dozen
English teacher”
Hayden had graduated from high school at Northwest Agricultural High School (affiliated with what’s now Northwest Community College), and enrolled at the University of Mississippi to study English, which had always been her favorite subject.
A professor told her early on, “don’t be a ‘dime-a-dozen’ English teacher. Teach a foreign language.”
She studied German along with English, but when the time came to find a job, no schools wanted to offer German, she said, so soon after World War II.
“So I became a dime-a-dozen English teacher,” she laughed.
In addition to grammar and American literature, students in her classes had vocabulary lessons, too.
“That was important to help them do well on tests and the ACT,” she explained.
Along with teaching traditional American works like those of Twain and Hawthorne, Hayden included a unit on Mississippi writers like Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright and Willie Morris.
“It was my favorite unit to teach,” she said. “I wanted them to feel proud of being from Mississippi. Our state has turned out writers like Virginia has turned out presidents.”
Poet  James Seay, a native of Panola County, was among a number of writers who came and spoke to students during Hayden’s time at SPHS.

Extracurricular activities
Admitting she’s a “people person,” Hayden said she enjoyed her years teaching and getting to know the teens who came through her classroom.
The late ‘60s and early ‘70s were glory years for South Panola girls’ basketball, and Hayden, with her husband Jack, and children Lily Fay and Mark, would follow the team, all the way to the state championship in Jackson.
Once the girls were playing in a tournament that fell during six-week test week. She felt sorry for them and put off her test one day to give them a chance to prepare for it.
“I got into trouble about that,” she said. “I wasn’t supposed to put off a six-week test.”
Hayden still hears from former students, whether it’s a greeting in the grocery store or a letter from afar.
Among her former students are doctors and lawyers, but she has just as high a regard for those who chose paths that required less formal education.
“Many of the students excelled and myriads of others who may not have been ‘A’ students finished their education and now hold jobs that make our world go around and have become the backbone of our country,” she said.

Busy retirement
Hayden remembers standing at her kitchen window, after she’d retired, and watching the yellow school buses go by.
“I felt like I ought to be somewhere other than at my kitchen window,” she said.
A local literacy program was active at the time, and needed a tutor, so she volunteered, and became a good friend of the lady she tutored. The woman was the mother of one of Hayden’s former students and was delighted to have her as her teacher.
Hayden helped her with practical literacy lessons, like reading directions and labels.
“She said she wanted to fix ‘fluffy rice’ but she couldn’t read the directions on the box of instant rice. So I taught her the words so she could follow the instructions,” she explained.
“She finally had fluffy rice. It was very rewarding.”

Learning for
learning’s sake
Hayden had loved her interactions with students and leading them through classics of American literature, but did not miss the required clerical duties once she retired.
“I wished you could learn for learning’s sake, not take tests,” she said.
After they retired, she and her husband discovered elder hostels, where they could do just that.
They found an abundance of offerings in Mississippi and nearby states, usually on college campuses, for week-long sessions at reasonable rates.
“You picked your scenery, your subjects and paid one fee for room and board. It was a great vacation,” she said.
They studied birdwatching on the Gulf Coast and political science at Harding University.
“There were no tests.”

Reception Sunday
Hayden’s former students and friends in the community are invited to a reception Sunday from 1:30-3:30 p.m. in the Batesville Church of Christ Annex.
There could be a big crowd.
Hayden remembers being asked if she taught everybody in the county.
“No, half.”