Lew Hayner, longtime teacher and Oakland Press editorialist, dies at age 98
“To think they pay me.” That was the saying regularly uttered by Lew Hayner, an English instructor at Pontiac Central High School for over 35 years. He died Saturday in Rochester Hills at age 98.
His funeral is Friday at St. Irenaeus Church in Rochester Hills, on what would have been his 99th birthday. The visitation is from 3-8 p.m. Thursday at Potere-Modetz Funeral Home in Rochester.
He is survived by his two sons, Lew Hayner, Jr. and Patrick, and daughter, Marylou (Timothy). He was also a grandfather to Nicholas, Sophia and Vivian.
Mary, his wife of 64 years, died about three years ago.
Hayner was born in 1922 in Detroit, developing an affinity for boxing and football. He and Mary later resettled in Pontiac, with Hayner beginning his education career as an English teacher at St. James High in Royal Oak. He also coached baseball, basketball and football.
“Tennis was a sport that he really loved the most,” said his son, Lew. “All our family played tennis.”
Hayner instructed his niece, Theresa Mullane (Logar), who later played the sport on scholarship at Stanford University and became a three-time AllAmerican athlete.
After coaching male and female tennis teams at Pontiac Catholic, now known as Notre Dame Prep, he began his four-decade stint inside the Pontiac Central classroom.
Lew Hayner Jr. called his father “a Pontiac mainstay” who was passionate about Michigan State University athletics. On the day of his death, Hayner ate a hearty breakfast and watched the Spartans take on Maryland. Later that evening, he passed in his sleep.
The teaching route almost never occurred, Hayner Jr. said. His father actually studied to become a priest in the Basilian order, but eventually became disenchanted and instead decided to attain two master’s degrees.
“He devoted his whole life to education,” Hayner Jr. said, adding that his father mixed philosophy lessons into his teaching curriculum.
Hayner was “a cerebral guy,” his son said, often making jokes “that would go over everybody’s heads” due to his father’s intellect
and way with language.
Along with teaching high schoolers, Hayner also taught night college classes at the University of Detroit Mercy and Oakland University. He taught at Oakland Community College until he was 83 years old.
“I used to sit in the back of his classroom and it was just phenomenal,” Hayner Jr. said, reminiscing about how his father would reference his knee socks that helped him stay upright. “He would stand the whole lecture and never sit.”
Former Pontiac Central students, like Rebecca Mullins from the class of 1984, called Hayner her favorite teacher, saying he was “always energetic, always compassionate about teaching us to be better people.”
Hayner’s life wasn’t confined inside a classroom,
however. He routinely wrote editorials for The Oakland Press, often providing conservative viewpoints or rebuttals to liberal-minded columns.
“The Oakland Press has been real close to our family ever since I was a young kid,” Hayner Jr. said, recalling his father circling articles of note he encouraged his children to read.
Hayner, who moved to Rochester Hills around 1990, had a fall about four months ago and then moved into an assisted living facility in the same city. Life wasn’t the same after his wife died.
For the man who “always had a book in his hand,” Hayner’s funeral is planned to be a celebration of life. Hayner Jr. said his father’s legacy can be summed up in three words: family, faith, education.