Family Squabble Surrounds Hayes Induction

The day it happens is one of the best days in the life of a football player or coach, and in this year’s case, an owner.

When that call comes from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it provides a last act for a great career. Even if the honored is now gone, it provides a final moment in the sun for their accomplishments.

That was the case a week ago Saturday, when the class of 2009 for the Hall of Fame was introduced in Miami.

There should have been nothing but joy surrounding the selection of former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Bob Hayes (left) to the Hall. As a seniors nominee he was facing his last chance at induction. Hayes passed away in 2002. His last season of play was 1975, when he wrapped up his 11-year career with four games in the uniform of the San Francisco 49ers. His first 10 seasons were in Dallas.

Hayes was first eligible for the Hall in 1981. His wait turned out to be 28 years.

At the announcement that he was part of the Hall’s class of 2009, his sister stood and read a letter that she said Hayes wrote back in 1999. Lucille Hester’s presentation left few dry eyes in the room at the Tampa Convention Center.

But it left a lot of other people angry. Members of Hayes family say Hester is a fraud and not his sister. They say the letter she wrote is a fraud and contains a signature that does not match Hayes’ There has even been media analysis of the typeface used on the printed page that Hester read from in Tampa. The typeface was not available to the public until 2007.

It’s caused quite the uproar around Hayes’ induction, so much so that the former wide receiver’s final triumph has been ignored and the focus has been on Hester (below).

“As far as I’m concerned, she’s a phony,” said Ernest Hayes, Bob’s 71-year old brother. He spoke to the Dallas Morning News. “Nobody in his original family likes her, at all. The further she stays away from us, the better off she’ll be.”

Bob Hayes’ former business manager, Ted McIntosh, sent a letter on Sunday to Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, where he expressed “dismay” that Hester represented Hayes in Tampa. He also sent e-mails to media outlets with the subject line: “ATTENTION!!! Lucille Hester is not Bob Hayes’ sister nor any relation to anyone in the family.” On a Dallas radio show, he called Hester “a perpetrator.”

McIntosh said the letter and e-mails were on behalf of Hayes’ brother Ernest, Hayes’ sister Lena, Hayes’ ex-wife Janice and son Bob Jr.

It’s a confusing family tree involved here. Bob Sr., Ernest and Lena had the same biological mother, Mary Robinson. Ernest and Lena’s biological father was Joseph Hayes. While Joseph Hayes raised Bob, he was not his biological father.

 

Hester said her biological father was George Sanders, who she said was Bob Hayes’ biological father as well as Georgette Sanders. Hester and Sanders said each of the three had different biological mothers

All of the siblings grew up a few blocks from one another in Jacksonville.

Georgette Sanders told the Morning News from her home in Jacksonville that the Hayes family’s claims make no sense because they all grew up knowing about one another.

“We’ve all been together, so I don’t know what the objection is now,” she told the newspaper. “It’s very odd. Who’s making the assumption that we’re not kin? Who would do that? It’s sad. This is supposed to be, and should be, a happy occasion for everyone.”

“Why are they doing this?” Hester asked. “I just don’t know why. And I don’t want to make this a distraction from such a beautiful event.”

A trio of Hayes teammates, Robert Newhouse, Rayfield Wright and Calvin Hill, said Hayes introduced Lucille Hester as his sister, and that they had never heard anything different.

“All I know is Lucille was by Bob as his sister to me,” Hill said. “The thing that always impressed me was she always seemed to be in his corner, especially when he was going through his tough times. I don’t know what the DNA is, but she seemed like a great sister to me.”

Said Wright: “Bob Hayes had two families. All I know is Bob introduced Lucille to me as his sister on several occasions. If you really look at her and you look at Bob Hayes, you can see a resemblance in features.”

Former Cowboys personnel maven Gil Brandt said in a television interview this week that he’d known Hester as Hayes sister. “This is not just a lady that popped out of nowhere,” Brandt said.

Hester and two family members, Bob Hayes Jr. and his mother Janice Hayes-Mohl, will meet this weekend in Honolulu, where the Class of 2009 will be part of the Pro Bowl festivities.

They all met on Friday in Hawaii when the Hall of Fame sat down with the inductees and their families to talk about the ceremonies in August.  There was no visible rift between any members of the family at Friday’s meeting, acccording to Joe Horrigan, the Hall’s spokesman and No. 2 executive.

“They’re all here, and they’re all getting along just fine, enjoying each other’s company,” he said. “They sat at the table with each other; hugs and kisses all around.”

Hopefully a truce can be brokered and the football world can get back to honor a man who averaged 20 yards a catch and who averaged a touchdown every five catches.