Family and friends recently gathered at a memorial for the late Bill Hayes, who began playing Doug Williams on Days of our Lives in 1970. He died on January 12. The tribute, which took place on Saturday, to the beloved actor, husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather is available to watch in its entirity below.
Remembering Bill Hayes
“I want to thank everyone that’s here,” said Susan Seaforth Hayes (Julie), Bill Hayes’s leading lady both on and off-screen. “A lot of you came a long, hard distance. You all have a piece of my heart. ‘The Look of Love’ — Bill Hayes had it and made this world shine with it. Especially when he was looking at us.”
Seaforth Hayes continued her heartfelt eulogy to the love of her life with facts and figures, humor, and, most of all, love. She detailed his childhood in Harvey, Illinois, his family, and his life as a performer. Seaforth Hayes spoke of Hayes’s love of baseball, piano, saying that he had a “natural ear to knock out any tune in any key,” which “unsettled his piano teacher, who discouraged such unbridled musicality so he switched to the violin and fiddled away until his 92nd year.”
Later, Hayes flew an open cockpit plane in World War II. “The Navy also taught him to dive off a 50 foot platform, and swim five miles fully clothed in one go; taught him to survive for three days on a deserted beach without food for water, and how to kill a man with his bare hands,” Seaforth Hayes continued. “Not planning to use these skills in civilian life, he was very happy to muster out of the Navy 24 hours after Japan surrendered. But he loved the flying…”
Seaforth Hayes said that Bill continued to dream about flying. She said that her husband accomplished raising 5 children, became a positive mentor to his 12 grandchildren, helped build a village hospital in Angola, wrote two published books, took up dancing seriously at 65, earned advanced degrees at Northwestern and the University of West Virginia.
Additionally, Hayes had a gold record — The Ballad of Davy Crockett — and also made the cover of Time magazine in 1976 in a story that focused on the popularity of daytime dramas. “From 1949 to 2024, he participated in the dawn, high summer, and sunset of network television as we know it,” Seaforth Hayes added.
This is just a small portion of the heartfelt tribute Seaforth Hayes and other loved ones gave to Hayes. To see and hear a video of the entire memorial, check out the video above. Soap Hub sends sincere condolences to Seaforth Hayes, the rest of Bill Hayes’s family, and his DAYS family.
