Jack Hayes, longtime NRN Southeast bureau chief, dies at 60

Nation's Restaurant News,  Feb 5, 2007  by Richard Martin

Tags: Hayes Corp.

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Atlanta -- Jack Hayes, the accomplished poet, humanitarian and business journalist 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.

Hayes, who earned a reputation among NRN readers and editorial associates for his skills in covering restaurant operations, trends and management matters, was perhaps most admired for his upbeat, compassionate nature and generosity of spirit.

Those qualities made Hayes a consummate interviewer and were reflected in such things as his being selected to compile and edit from its inception NRN's "Community Matters" department page of news about the industry's charitable initiatives.

"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."

Hayes 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, a talent he had honed since the fourth grade. He gained 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 and humanitarianism 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 naturalist, musician, vocalist and lyricist. In recent years he began studying piano, taking voice lessons and singing tenor in a church choir. 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. As Hayes described it, the operetta tells of Eve's healing from the sin of disobedience by "leading women and men from the bliss of ignorance into the uncertainty of knowing themselves, of choosing, of discovering their divinity."

Hayes brought a more lighthearted form of lyricism into the 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 the seasonal flora. The message always ended with the reminder, "And when you eat out today, be sure to leave a big tip."

He was an avid outdoorsman and horticulturist who enjoyed building rock walls in his garden and taking an annual weeklong hike along the Appalachian Trail. He recently got closer to nature by buying a small weekend house in rural Franklin, N.C., in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains near the Georgia border.

Restaurateurs admired the many qualities Hayes brought to his news reporting.

"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."