Harold Hayes

Harold Pinckney Hayes CHARLOTTE - The footsteps of great men can be hard to follow, because sometimes they have walked softly among us. Harold Pinckney Hayes took his last footsteps on this Earth March 2, 2016, and has joined his parents Guy and Lilly Hayes in Heaven. At 92, he had lived a wonderfully fulfilling life. While many people associate great men with prestigious awards and high office, Harold was great in a way that is exceedingly rare; he lived his life with an intense purity of character: his honesty, integrity, persistence, and dedication were unmatched. Yet despite all the achievements he accomplished with those traits, Harold was grounded with humility. He would not tell long stories of his troop's march through France and Germany in World War II. He wouldn't look to impress others with mention of working his way to his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Illinois by painting campus buildings. And certainly he never boasted of his hard work building a successful company, Commercial Distribution Systems, as the son of a mill worker in a city of old school businessmen. So strong was Harold's sense of modesty that his family was overwhelmingly surprised to learn one day that he had spent years writing his autobiography, A Capricorn Climbing His Mountain. Looking back, we think perhaps that this was not so much an achievement to conquer his hesitance to write, but rather to leave the memories of his quiet accomplishments for us to remember when he no longer could. Harold is survived by the most precious thing in his world, his wife Maria, whom he convinced after the war to marry him in Salzburg, Austria and come with him to America for a 68 year life of love, challenges and devotion. Maria and Harold's children and grandchildren include son Eric, son Philip and his wife Traci, their children and spouses Brandon and Brittany and Melissa and Stuart Mace, and their combined four beautiful grandchildren. He is also survived by his sister Jean Dawson and husband Roy, their two daughters Terri and Linda and their husbands and children.