Christopher Hayes, 76; founded crime watch program
Christopher Hayes dedicated his life to helping others. When crime became a major problem in his native South End, he got residents to carry whistles that would summon a neighbor. He created the "telephone tree," a list of residents' numbers that people could carry with them. He wanted neighbors to look out for neighbors.
When his daughter, Maura, had cancer at age 2, she was treated back to health at Dana-Farber Cancer Center with the help of the Jimmy Fund. Her father never forgot that, and over a period of 20 years, he donated platelets 700 times "as his way of giving back," said his wife, Clare.
In 1992, she said, the National Association of Blood Banks honored him in San Francisco for giving the largest number of platelets to help cancer patients.
"Chris felt he had a mission," Clare Hayes said. He was "almost messianic, and he believed truly that people were responsible for one another's security and that neighbors could protect each other. He felt neighbors should be treated as an extended family and that [protection] worked only on a block-to-block basis."
Mr. Hayes, who in 1985 founded the Neighborhood Crime Watch program for the Boston Police Department - died Sunday at Brigham and Women's Hospital following a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He was 76.
Boston police officials said yesterday that Mr. Hayes's South End model of neighbors-looking-out-for-neighbors went a long way in fighting crime in the city. It was a model for other cities and meshed with Boston's community policing, they said,
Mayor Thomas M. Menino said the crime watch is "one of the most effective tools we have to fight crime, citing the 1,500 "crime watchers" in the city.
"Chris was a very effective leader who had the trust of our neighborhoods and taught people how to take charge," the mayor said.
Former police commissioner Paul F. Evans Jr. recalled that he was night area deputy superintendent when he met Mr. Hayes in 1981, "when Chris had his own little neighborhood night watch. I had had calls about people blowing whistles [in the South End]," he said.
The police department was so impressed with what Mr. Hayes was doing there that it incorporated the model into the department and made Mr. Hayes director, Evans said.
"Chris was passionate about what he did," said Evans, who was commissioner from 1993 to 2003. He recalled the many community meetings he attended with Mr. Hayes. At times, he said, they clashed over how things would get done. "Chris would take issue with my side. He was always on the community's side. He really believed in what he did."
Evans recalled the years of the "Boston Miracle," when the city went for more than two years with low crime statistics. He said that success was heavily indebted to the 1,200 neighborhood meetings Mr. Hayes had scheduled.
"Chris's big role was in creating a partnership between police and community, making them aware of what was going on in the community. His block-to-block crime watchers were the eyes and ears of the police," said police Superintendent in Chief Robert Dunford.
"Chris was a South Ender's South Ender," said fellow South End resident Mel King, a former state representative, retired MIT professor, and friend of 50 years. "He expanded for me the biblical statement of being one's brother's keepers. He was his neighbors' keeper and totally into those things which would build relationships and respect for each other."
King recalled how in the late 1960s when racial tensions ran high, Mr. Hayes "was the first" to dash out onto the football field to protect the black players on the South End team from the white players on the home team.
Mr. Hayes was born at home in the South End to Irish immigrant parents, James and Anne (Kingston) Hayes, who had also been local activists. He was one of seven children.
He graduated from Cathedral High School in 1950 and served in the Army during the Korean War, assigned to a military police unit in Yokohama, Japan. When he returned, he got a job delivering Hood's milk to wholesalers while starting his community work in the 1950s.
He had known Clare Helman in the neighborhood for years. "I lived on one side of the South End and he on the other," she said. They met at community meetings and on field trips and at record hops held by Mel King at the South End Community Center. They worked together on King's political campaigns and married in 1967.
In 1983, Mr. Hayes ran unsuccessfully for the Boston City Council. The Globe reported that year that Mr. Hayes hoped to be more helpful to his neighborhood as a councilor.
He retired from his milk route in 1985 and became director of the crime watch. He continued his commitment to the Jimmy Fund and sat on the board of the Pine Street Inn, the homeless shelter.
Neither Mr. Hayes nor his family will be forgotten in the South End, his neighbors said. One of them, Jean Gibran, a resident there since 1964, said the Hayes Family "symbolized the strength of the neighborhood. They showed us how to do it. They were our role models. If there was ever any trouble, Chris was right there."
Judi Wright succeeded Mr. Hayes when he retired from the crime watch in 2002. "Chris was a wonderful, gentle man, who did wonderful things for our city," she said.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Hayes leaves two daughters, Maura Hayes-Hendricks and Jennifer, both of Boston; four brothers, Bernard, Paul, Harry and Barry, all of the South End; a sister, Mary McCarthy of Cork City, Ireland; and two grandchildren.
A funeral Mass will be said at 11 a.m. Monday in the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston. Burial will be in Forest Hills Cemetery. 