COLUMBUS — Any football fan in Ohio is at least familiar with the name Woody Hayes. The legendary Ohio State football coach died more than 36 years ago, but cast a long shadow over Ohio Stadium that exists to this day.
Those who have studied Woody’s exploits, which included five national championships and 13 Big Ten titles as the Buckeyes’ boss, are known as Woody Watchers. The most astute Woody Watchers know Hayes’ had a fascination for literature (especially Ralph Waldo Emerson), and military history (with a special fondness for Gen. George S. Patton).
Still, how many know his family’s background?
The Woody Hayes story is almost entirely an Ohio production, except for his five years of military service during World War II.
Actually, the military’s hold on Woody may be traced to a Civil War casualty in his own family.
Woody’s great grandfather, David Hayes, was a blacksmith who joined the Union army at the dawn of the Civil War. He was killed during the Battle of Antietam in September 1862, leaving Woody’s grandfather, Isaac, an orphan at 8 years old.
Isaac Hayes became an Ohio farmer in Noble County and fathered 12 children. The brood was expected to help work the family homestead, but after nightly chores, his son Wayne (born in 1880) spent his remaining waking hours drilling with his mother, Woody’s grandmother (Mariah Huffman Hayes), on reading and math — it was the only way off the farm.
Shortly after completing the eighth grade, Wayne passed the Boxwell Examination, scoring high enough to qualify him to teach eighth grade. Teaching would become Wayne’s lifetime profession. Slowly, he built a family and his academic resume, which included serving as Superintendent of the Clifton School from 1912 to 1916.
Woody was born in Clifton on Feb. 14, 1913, deep in the southwestern part of the state, along the border of Clark and Green counties. He was the youngest of three children for Wayne and Effie (Hupp) Hayes.
In 1920, after attending six colleges, Wayne earned a degree from Wittenberg. Woody was 7 years old, and never forgot the tenacity his father displayed to achieve that goal.
That led to Wayne’s job as superintendent at Newcomerstown, where Woody and his siblings were schooled.
Woody’s brother Ike, born in 1911, was the athlete of the family. Ike Hayes earned second-team All-America honors from the News Enterprise Association as a guard at Iowa State in 1935. He was the Cyclones’ team captain that season and was elected to the Iowa State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2017.
Ike Hayes was an influential student on campus and selected “Most Representative Man” of his class in 1937. After graduation, he was promoted to cavalry captain at a base in New Guinea prior to the beginning of World War II. He returned home after the service and started his veterinary practice in Waterloo, Iowa, specializing in treating horses.
Woody’s sister Mary, eight years older, was a high achiever, too. She was a performer who left Ohio after high school to pursue a singing career at the Ithaca Conservatory of Music and Dramatic Art.
Mary went all the way to New York City in 1929, where she was the headliner in a Broadway play and shared the backside of a marquee with another Hayes of enormous fame, Helen Hayes. Mary won the part mainly because she could play the piano with the skill of a virtuoso.
Mary Hayes played the leading lady in The War Song. During the Depression she became the first female radio announcer in New York City and went on to write a series of radio programs.
Meanwhile, Woody was the spoiled baby among his siblings, and he had to work hard to carve his own path.
“My grades were not exceptional,” Woody said. “I’m afraid I was too darn ornery — always getting in fights.”
His edgy nature and competitive fire included boxing his older brother for cash (under the assumed names Battling Nelson and the Cuban Kid) on the farm of Newcomerstown’s most famous citizen, retired Major League Baseball Hall of Famer Cy Young.
Woody was a multi-sport athlete at Newcomerstown, including a center on the football team, and graduated in 1931. He went on to Denison, where he played tackle, and graduated in 1935.
He took his degree and began teaching at Mingo Junction in 1935–36 and then New Philadelphia in 1937, helping coach high school football each season. By 1938, he was hired as head coach at New Philadelphia, and went 17-2-1 his first two years before sliding to a 1-9 mark in 1940.
It was here that he met and married his wife Anne. At around the same time, Hayes enlisted in the United States Navy in July 1941, six months before Pearl Harbor.
“People talk about how devoted Woody is to football, he was just as dedicated to the Navy,” Anne Hayes said. “Why, we had been married only five days when he asked for sea duty. He didn’t get it at once, but he did request it.
“Stevie (their son) was nearly 9 months old before Woody saw him for the first time.”
Much has been made about Hayes’ admiration of Gen. Patton, yet he saw action in the Pacific as part of Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s forces. Woody eventually rose to the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
His service record included commanding the USS Ukiah (PPC-1251), a control submarine chaser, in the Palau Islands invasion and the destroyer-escort USS Rinehart (DE-196) in both the Atlantic and Pacific operations.
As World War II wound down, Hayes’ alma mater, Denison University, planned to reinstate its football program (which had been suspended during the war). It contacted former head coach Tom Rogers (also in the Navy) about rejoining the program as head coach.
Rogers declined, but recommended Hayes, his former team captain, be the next head coach. Denison cabled Hayes a job offer, which he accepted, minutes before his Navy ship was to begin the passage through the Panama Canal — meaning Hayes would have been incommunicado for an extended period of time.
He was discharged in 1946 (read more about Woody’s military career at this link) and immediately returned to Denison University as head coach. His future course was set for good.
Hayes went on to coach at Denison, Miami of Ohio, and Ohio State, the latter from 1951 to 1978. He compiled a lifetime record of 238–72–10, which placed him ninth in all-time NCAA Division I FBS coaching victories.
He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1983.
Through it all, Hayes was long influenced by the military, naming his favorite play (the fullback dive) Patton 26 and Patton 27 (right or left),
“The thing about Patton is that his casualties amounted to about one-third of those of the other generals,” Woody told John Ed Bradley in a 1984 story for the Washington Post. “You had to fight for him, but you didn’t have to die.”
Woody also made a lifelong friend in future president Richard Nixon. In 1958, Nixon was attending a game in Ohio Stadium and the two bonded.
They became so close that Nixon delivered Woody’s eulogy in 1987, remarking about a visit Hayes paid him in the Oval Office during his presidency.
“I wanted to talk football and Woody wanted to talk foreign policy,” Nixon remembered with a chuckle. “You know Woody, we talked foreign policy.”
As players, coaches, foes and even a president learned, Hayes had a will that would bend to no one.
