Intellectual curiosity, family motivated former Pitt professor

Sam Hays served as a professor and chair in the History Department at the University of Pittsburgh for three decades and was known for his work on American social history and environmental issues.

“He was such a role model for us kids,” his daughter Polly Hays of Boulder, Colo., said. “His actions always followed his words and beliefs.”

Mr. Hays died at the age of 96 on Nov. 22 at Frasier Meadows Retirement Community in Boulder.

He was born in Corydon, Ind., the son of C. Blaine Hays and Clara Ridley Pfrimmer.

His mother had a master’s degree and his father was a farmer as well as a lawyer, so it was just expected that when he graduated from Corydon High School in 1940, he would attend college.

He began studies at Swarthmore College, but became a conscientious objector during World War II and served most of the time from 1943 to 1946 at a forestry camp in Elkton, Ore.

He returned to Swarthmore and graduated 1948.

His daughter said it was his outdoor service in Oregon that inspired his career in history and environmentalism.

“He would always tell us as kids if you go into history you can do what you want, because history can be about anything,” Ms. Hays said.

Mr. Hays met Barbara Darrow at Swarthmore.

“My mother worked in the library at Swarthmore at the desk, so they would see each other but never met,” Ms. Hays said.

“So when he asked her out and she said yes she had to ask one of the other students working what his name was when he walked away.”

They married in 1948. They became Quakers while at Swarthmore, a college founded by the Society of Friends.

Mr. Hays earned a doctorate from Harvard University in 1953, then taught American history at the University of Illinois and the University of Iowa before starting at Pitt in 1960.

As the history chair at Pitt, “he was a very good defender of the department. He saw himself more as a member of the department — not as an administrator,” said Van Beck Hall, a former history professor at Pitt.

Mr. Hall worked with Mr. Hays at Pitt from 1964 until Mr. Hays’ retirement in 1990.

Mr. Hall remembers working in the late afternoons with Mr. Hays on a graduate seminar, then walking home together to their homes in Squirrel Hill.

“We had a lot of great conversations,” Mr. Hall said. “You just knew Sam was someone you could really trust.

“He would always say what was on his mind. He was also very willing to listen to others.”

Mr. Hall said Mr. Hays allows allowed others to share their views, whether he agreed with them or not.

His daughter agreed that open-mindedness was present throughout her father’s life, especially when it came to family.

“My father was a conscientious objector and he had to pay a fine each month because of that. Well, his brother, who was in the Navy, would [give] part of his pay to my father [to] pay that. Even though they had differing views on service their family loyalty kept them together,” Ms. Hays said.

Mr. Hays combined history, geneaology and family as a professor. He would assign a paper in one of the introductory history classes that required students talk to their grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles in order to get an idea of their family history.

Then he would have them relate their own family history to what was going in the United States at that time.

“He really forced his students to get talking to their grandparents and hear their important life stories,” Mr. Hall said, who added that his colleague taught at every level, “from obscurely specific graduate courses to the introductory survey class.”

Ms. Hays said she learned from her father the importance of family. She said she remembers taking a trip to Indiana with her family to visit the graves of their ancestors.

He had studied genealogy in Harrison County, Ind., as a young child. Ms. Hays said that the genealogy of both his and his wife’s families was one of his favorite projects from his work. He had deep roots in Indiana and later in life established endowments to provide financing for a park there and the Frederick Porter Griffin Historical and Genealogical Library in Corydon.

Mr. Hays retired from Pitt in 1990.

“I really think he would have liked to stay teaching,” Mr. Hall said.

Mr. Hays worked to develop the archives at Pitt. During his first few years at the university Mr. Hays worked with graduate students to build an archive of Pittsburgh’s early 20th century industrial society.

Ms. Hays remembers their Pittsburgh home being filled with stacks and stacks of newspapers and other papers.

Mr. Hays was a gardener, baseball fan and lover of the outdoors,

He and his wife moved to Colorado in 2000 to be closer to two of their children and grandchildren.

“My mother always said she wanted to move before my dad was 80,” Ms. Hays said. “That was because he was a historian and had all kinds of archives and books and my mother wanted him to be the one to pack and move everything.”

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Hays is survived by his wife, Barbara Hays, who lives in Colorado, sons Peter Hays of Eugene, Ore. and Michael Hays of Chicago, Ill.; daughter Becky Bragg of Boulder, Colo., and four grandchildren and one stepgrandchild.

Mr. Hays donated his body to the Colorado State Anatomical Board for teaching purposes.

On Dec.18 a ceremony in honor of his life will be held at Frasier Meadows Manor in Boulder from 1 to 3 p.m. Plans also are underway for a memorial gathering in April 2018 at Mr. Hays’ hometown of Corydon, Ind.

Contributions in Mr. Hays’ memory may be made to the Harrison County Community Foundation Fund for Indian Creek Woods or the Frederick Porter Griffin Fund for the History and Genealogy of Harrison County.