- Opelousas paper:
Friday, June 8, 1917
MRS. M. M. HAYES PASSES TO HER REWARD
Opelousas' Noted Woman Educator and Christian Character Died Friday Morning.
The citizens of this city were shocked Friday morning when it became known that Mrs. M. M. Hayes (better known as "Aunt Mag") had died at her residence at 3 o'clock a.m., aged 73 years, 6 months and 25 days. The funeral will take place tomorrow (Saturday) at 10 o'clock a.m., with services at the Methodist Church, of which she was a life-long member, and interment in the public cemetery.
The deceased was the youngest of a famous family, the Whites, who moved to Louisiana from Tennessee many years ago and settled in Opelousas. Several of her brothers were ministers of the Methodist Church in this state, while one was a physician. It seemed a characteristic of the entire family to devote its life to teaching and otherwise attending to the moral, educational and physical
uplift of humanity. Mrs. Hayes, many years ago, turned her attention to teaching and through her constant and untiring efforts in that direction she built up a famous institution of learning in this city which only passed from existence when her advancing age and failing health forced her to give up active work.
The deceased, many years ago, married Sheriff J. M. [sic] Hayes and to that union was born several children all of whom died in their infancy. Her step-children, C. L. Hayes, chief of police of this city, and Mrs. Ida Jackson of Houston, Texas, and several step-grandchildren survive. Also, a great number of nephews, nieces, scattered over Louisiana and adjoining states remain to mourn her end.
With a heart full of charity and a well-grounded belief that her duty was to alleviate suffering on the one hand and to lift mankind from the depths of ignorance and illiteracy to a higher plane, she devoted all her active life--and
that was many years--to showing people the straight and narrow path that led to better things beyond. She did not wear her mantle of Christianity exposed so that all could see, but by her deeds in this active life she showed thoroughly what was the mainspring of her existence and the impelling force of great character.
In her passing Opelousas, St. Landry parish and the state of Louisiana have lost one of their noble citizens, and her place, thus made vacant by the cutting scythe of Father Time, will be hard indeed to fill. One of her pupils of former years, who, like many other, has won fame if not fortune in the world of affairs, has penned the following about "Aunt Mag:"
MRS. M. M. HAYES
The death of Mrs. M. M. Hayes takes from this world a character of the truest, the greatest, nobility.
No monument of bronze or marble, however imposing, could equal that which she builded for herself, long ere her death, in the good deeds, the splendid services and grand christian life which marked every step of her career.
Her's will be like the warrior's funeral; but for muffled drums there will be stifled heart throbs; for martial music there will be only the cadence of universal sorrow; for the silken flag that shrouds the casket there will be a priceless fabric of her own weaving--the unalloyed, undying affection of all who knew her.
If frail humanity ever approaches perfection surely none came nearer the mark than she. She was all that the sacred word "mother" embraces and implies; she was all that the word "wife"--almost as holy--demands and signifies; and,
compassing all, in its grandest, purest, most expressive sense, she was pre-eminently a "woman."
No tribute that mortal hand can pen could ever do her justice. Glowing words of praise or encomiums of the grandest eloquence are but vapid expressions compared with the sweetness and beauty and purity which her entire life bespoke.
Such a death as her's is not sad when we recall the reward that must surely be her portion; but taking the narrower view her death is sorrowful beyond expression because this community, this world, possesses too few like her, and can ill afford to lose such a character from whom there ever radiated only the sincerest and truest charity, beneficence and virtue.
XXX
(posted to Ancestry.com by Don Miles)
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