Elizabeth Garrett Hayes
Elizabeth Garrett Hayes, known to her many friends and family as “Libby,” died peacefully in her sleep on Saturday, November 30, 2019, at Morningside House in Parkville, Maryland. She was 95.
Libby’s husband of 73 years, James Stoddard Hayes (“Jim”), predeceased her by just over four months. Libby is survived by her children, James Stoddard Hayes, Jr., of Joppa, Maryland; Katharine Hayes Armitage, of Brixham, England; and Curtis Woods Hayes, of Midlothian, Virginia; six grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.
Libby was the youngest child of Albert and Ethel Garrett of Swarthmore. A Quaker by birth, she grew up attending the Swarthmore Friends Meeting. She briefly attended the Westtown School, but illness forced her to leave, and she graduated from Swarthmore High School with the class of 1942. After high school, she earned an A.B. degree from Bradford Junior College and was trained as an executive secretary at the Katharine Gibbs College in Providence, Rhode Island.
She and Jim were married on June 1, 1946, after Jim returned from serving in the Pacific theater in World War II, in a Quaker ceremony at the Swarthmore Friends Meeting. Libby and her family lived all over the United States, in Southeast Asia, and in the United Kingdom. On average, they moved to a new home every 1 ½ years. While this was not at all what Libby was accustomed to growing up (her parents lived in the same house from the time she was born until her father’s death in 1967), she became adept at making a new house into a home for her family, wallpapering, painting, putting up curtains, hanging pictures, and arranging furniture. Whenever she moved to a new location, she was quick to become a part of her new community. She loved being a hostess, made many friends, and always kept in touch.
Throughout her life, Libby was an accomplished athlete. As a teenager, she player varsity lacrosse and field hockey and was a member of Swarthmore High School’s multi-year undefeated “dream team” of the early 1940s. Later, her interests turned to tennis and golf, and, when her travels took her to distant places, she played golf in such exotic locales as St. Andrews in Scotland and the Royal Bangkok Sports Club in Bangkok, Thailand. She continued to play golf and tennis into her 80s, often competing in tournaments at her home in The Dunes on Sanibel Island, Florida.
Libby was a great competitor, not only at sports, but in everything she did. She loved bridge and was a formidable duplicate player. Even in non-competitive activities, there were no half-efforts. She pushed herself to achieve and surpass milestones that she would set for herself.
Libby loved to act and, beginning in high school, performed wherever and whenever she could find an audience. In her early 20s, she was often cast in lead roles as the ingenue. She was a member of the Players Club of Swarthmore and performed in several of its productions in the 1940s, including the role of Sally Middleton in John Van Druten’s “The Voice of the Turtle” (subsequently made into a film starring Eve Arden, as Sally Middleton, and Ronald Reagan). Later, she performed more mature leads, including that of the tortured Bella Manningham in Patrick Hamilton’s “Angel Street” (which became the movie “Gaslight”) for the Player’s Society in Watertown, New York. In later life, even as her body began to fail her, she took delight in regaling her caregivers with lines from long-forgotten plays and songs from musicals of the ‘40s and ‘50s.
Like her mother before her, Libby enjoyed painting. She was prolific, especially later in life. Early watercolors from her many hours snow-bound in a Quonset hut in Appleton, Wisconsin, were eventually turned into oil paintings composed on the deck of her home overlooking a waterhole at The Dunes, or her studio in her house in Bronxville, New York.
Always active, Libby worked as a volunteer for many causes. During World War II, she volunteered as a candy-striper in Philadelphia-area hospitals caring for injured soldiers and sailors who had been shipped stateside, often with severe debilitating psychological injuries. There, she met the then-unknown comedian Jonathan Winters, who is reputed to have proposed marriage to her, although Libby refused, finding him somewhat “odd.” (Libby’s children viewed this particular story with a certain level of skepticism until Mr. Winters called and spoke to one of her sons while in Bangkok performing for the USO in 1967).
In Bangkok, where they lived while Jim was building a paper factory 50 kilometers east of the city, Libby volunteered to teach English at a girls normal school. This was at a time — 1966-70 — when most Americans in Bangkok were GIs recuperating from combat in the war in Vietnam. Although she spoke very little Thai and could not write or read the language, her students adored her. Her renditions of “Inky Dinky Spider” charmed many of the young children and helped them view Americans as kind, generous people. When she left, her students gave her a testimonial plaque (“Mrs. Hayes — Thank you for your patients [sic]”), signed by each student, which she treasured the rest of her life and displayed in a prominent location in every house in which she lived thereafter.
Libby survived her husband, all six of her siblings and their spouses, both Jim’s siblings and their spouses, and most of her friends. Yet, with her memory failing and confined to a wheelchair, she still loved a good party. Despite her challenges, she was almost always positive and happy. Her children will always remember her renditions of “I Love You Truly,” sung slightly off-key but with great gusto.
Her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and other relatives, friends and acquaintances will miss her dearly, but take solace in the knowledge that she is once again keeping the company with her beloved Jim.
Libby will be remembered at a memorial service in the spring, at a time and date yet to be determined. For further information, contact her son, Tod, at tod@nanasasufarm.com.
