Mechanical engineering professor Wallace Hayes' high school nickname was "The Professor." Once, after winning a spelling bee, he was asked, as a joke, to spell 'professor.'
He managed to spell it incorrectly. It was classic Hayes, playing the part of the absent-minded professor, his daughter Judith said.
Wallace Hayes, an innovator in supersonic flight and aircraft design, died March 2. He was 82.
In seminars, Hayes had a habit of seeming to nod off, said Luigi Martin-elli GS '87, then a graduate student and now a professor in the mechanical engineering department.
"Toward the end, he would wake up, raise his hand and ask a very pointed question," Martin-elli said, adding that everyone present knew that he had been taking in the conversation all along.
Martinelli recalled that Hayes was "very quiet, but always on top of things."
Sometimes when Hayes left his office for a meeting, he would be so focused on a problem he was thinking about or an errand he had to run that he would forget all about the meeting, get in his car and go home, Martinelli said.
Many saw this as a testament to Hayes' incredible focus. Once he was concentrating on something, it was very difficult to focus his attention on anything else, Martinelli added.
But no one denies Hayes' brilliance, his passion for life or his ability as a father.
"He just was such a brilliant man," Bernardine Vanuiter, now psychology department manager, said of the man who was her first boss 33 years ago.
"He was above everyone in the field," Martinelli said of the feeling of reverence that came anytime a student or researcher approached Hayes.
"He was really an international star," engineering professor Richard Miles explained, referring to Hayes' groundbreaking work on hypersonic flow.
Hayes' pursuits were not limited to academia, however.
Vanuiter called him "a true Renaissance man, very interested in everything."
One of Hayes' greatest loves was for flying. When the mechanical engineering department was located at the Forrestal Campus, Martinelli recalled, Hayes would give rides to students, faculty members and their families every year in his plane.
Judith Hayes also remembered her father's love of flying, especially during one Independence Day celebration when she said she got a chance to watch fireworks in an unusual way. She recalled that her father took her up in his plane and they circled Palmer Stadium as the fireworks were going off.
"He knew how to have a good time," she said.
Hayes was also a founder of and active participant in the University gliding club.
A fan of outdoor sports, Hayes loved skiing, mountaineering, ice climbing, snorkeling and camping.
"He loved trying new things," his daughter said. "He was a wonderful father."
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