ATLANTA Jack Hayes, the highly respected veteran business journalist and acclaimed poet who was Nation’s Restaurant News’ Southeast bureau chief for 19 years, died Jan. 26 after an apparent heart attack at his home in suburban Snellville, Ga. He was 60. A memorial service will be held Thursday, Feb. 1, in Roswell, Ga., at the United Methodist Church, 814 Mimosa Blvd., (770) 993-6218. For directions to church, visit: www.rumc.com/page.aspx?id=79224
Hayes, though perhaps most admired for his upbeat, compassionate nature and a generosity of spirit that was reflected in his avocation as a juvenile-court social worker, maintained a reputation at NRN for his skills in covering restaurant operations, trends and management matters. He reported for NRN right up to his death, which came just hours after he'd filed a news story for the weekly publication. Hayes also was editor of NRN's "Community Matters" department page of news about the industry's charitable initiatives, and he wrote a regular installment of NRN's "Words From" column on regional issues.
He reported on everything from culinary trends in Atlanta to market developments in the Carolinas to hurricane recovery efforts in Florida, but his insightful intellect and flair with words also found a voice in poetry. He gained a recognition one year as the unofficial poet laureate of Georgia after winning the Georgia Poetry Circuit prize. He also won the national Rainmaker Prize for poetry and a scholarship to the prestigious Breadloaf Writers Conference at Middlebury College in Vermont. In recent years his poems have been published in the Southern Poetry Review and Atlanta Review.
Hayes also expressed his empathetic nature through extracurricular community endeavors. Even while meeting his NRN deadlines and working his regional business beat, he had returned to school in recent years to earn the master's degree that enabled him to work several evenings each week with troubled youth as the clinical social worker for the Rockdale County Juvenile Court's Evening Reporting Center program in Conyers, Ga.
"I believe the success of the center is due to Jack," said Stan Williams, director of the program, which enables judges to sentence juveniles to required reporting sessions instead of incarceration. "Jack was the clinician on site, and he handled all the home visits with the young people for academic and life counseling," Williams said. "Jack's the man who did that, in one-on-one sessions with the parents and the kids. He used poetry extensively in teaching life skills, and Jack's love for that helped bring out the true potential of these kids."
Though Hayes struggled for at least the last decade of his life with complications of diabetes, he was able to balance his professional and artistic pursuits with interests as an amateur horticulturist, musician, vocalist and lyricist. In 2002, after writing the libretto to an "avant-garde electroacoustic operetta" titled "Emerald Epiphany," he and composer Peggy Still copyrighted the work, which was recorded on Aucourant Records.
Hayes brought a more lighthearted form of lyricism into the workaday lives of callers to his NRN office phone through his habit of recording a new voicemail greeting each day that vividly described the Atlanta area's weather and seasonal flora. The message always ended with the reminder, "And when you eat out today, be sure to leave a big tip."
Restaurateurs admired the many qualities Hayes brought to his news reporting. "He was extremely transparent, an honest reporter, and he always was for the little guy," said David Davoudpour, chairman and chief executive of Shoney's, the Nashville, Tenn.-based chain. "His friendship did not change with me from when I started with one restaurant in the '80s to today, when I have a multimillion-dollar company. He was a reporter you could trust without fail. He told the truth, and I'm sorry that he is gone."
George W. McKerrow Jr., president and chief executive of the Atlanta-based Ted's Montana Grill chain, said: "I have known Jack Hayes for over 20 years. He was the quintessential friend to the industry, always witty and honest and kind and considerate. He was a great writer and photographer, too. We will all miss him greatly."
"Jack was a great guy," said Pano Karatassos, president of Buckhead Life Restaurant Group, the Atlanta-based operator of 12 upscale-casual restaurants. "I had a lot of respect for him. He loved charity and always tried to help the underprivileged. For sure he wanted to devote himself to that. His articles were always well thought out and well written. He was an intelligent guy for sure."
Ellen Hartman, a veteran executive of the Popeyes chain's parent company, AFC Enterprises, who now is president of the Atlanta office of Weber Shandwick Worldwide, remembers Hayes with admiration. "From his joyful answering machine messages to his sweet and thoughtful email closings, Jack made everyone who came in contact with him just a little bit happier," she said. "He was a strong journalist, with a sensitive and kind soul."
Hayes, who studied English and philosophy at Rutgers University, began his 39-year career in journalism with the weekly Verona-Cedar Grove Times in Verona, N.J. He later was associate editor of Handyman, a national do-it-yourself consumer monthly based in New York. He then was Southeast bureau chief for HFD, a New York-based national retailing journal, and a freelance business writer before joining Nation's Restaurant News in 1988.
"Jack was a journalist who loved to cover the foodservice industry," said NRN editor in chief Ellen Koteff. "He had great respect for restaurant operators and he could easily relate to their passions. Judging from the comments that I have heard over the years from readers, the feeling was mutual. He was a compassionate man who will be missed not only for his numerous contributions to the quality of the magazine, but more importantly for the exceptional human being he was."
Hayes is survived by his companion Kathy Brown, his sons Adam, Aaron and Abe, six grandchildren, a brother, Bill Hayes, and a half-sister, Dorothy Stefanick. The family has suggested that expressions of respect could be made in the form of donations to the American Diabetes Association or to the Rockdale County Juvenile Court Evening Reporting Center, in care of Rockdale Coalition-ERC, P.O. Box 658, Conyers, Ga. 30012.
