John Hay: Memorials

John Hay: Memorials

In addition to the John Hay Birthplace itself, and Lake John Hay, formed by the damming of Rush Creek in Washington County, Indiana, The memory of Salem's most famous native son is commemorated by:

Memorials to John Hay

The Hay-Adams Hotel, One Lafayette Square, Washington, DC 20006, 800-424-5054 -- John Hay and his good friend Henry Adams built homes side by side on Lafayette Park across from the White House that became a hub of Washington society at the turn of the century. They were replaced by this luxury hotel in 1927.

John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island -- The John Hay Library houses most of the University's rare books, manuscripts, special collections and archives. Among the notable materials are the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, the McLellan Lincoln Collection, the Annmary Brown Memorial Collection of fifteenth century books, the Broadsides Collection of primarily single sheet documents, the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, and the University Archives. The John Hay is open to all members of the Brown community and to the general public.

John Hay Monument, Lake View Cemetery, 12316 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, Section 10, Lot 73 -- Hay, his wife Clara and son Delbert are buried here close by the monument of Hay's father-in-law, Amasa Stone, and another successful Clevelander, John D. Rockefeller. The memorial, a warrior-angel, was designed by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and executed by James Earle Fraser, and erected in 1916.The sculptor Saint-Gaudens also did a portrait bust of Hay which is on exhibit at the Saint-Gaudens National Historical Site in Cornish, Hew Hampshire. Saint-Gaudens was also the sculptor of the famous funerary monument of Clover Adams, the wife of Hay's close friend Henry Adams, and a copy of that work is on view in Cornish, as well.

John Hay National Wildlife Refuge, Route 103A, Newbury, New Hampshire -- Between 1883 and 1900 John Hay purchased 1,000 acres of farmland on the shore of Lake Sunapee as a summer home, which he called The Fells. He died there on July 1, 1905. John’s son, Clarence, and his wife, Alice Appleton Hay, refined the house and grounds between 1914 and 1940, transforming the rocky pastures into rolling lawns and developing a collection of gardens. In 1960 Clarence Hay donated 675 acres to the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests (SPNHF). A parcel of 163.5 acres surrounding the main house was deeded to the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife, thereby becoming the John Hay National Wildlife Refuge. Since Alice Hay’s death in 1987, The Fells has been preserved by public-private partnerships among the Garden Conservancy, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the State of New Hampshire, the Lake Sunapee Protective Association, SPNHF, and local volunteers.

John Hay Reservoir in Wyoming -- Information about this body of water is not easy to come by (the Web link is to a map for sale by the U.S. Geological Survey). It may be be named not for John Milton Hay, but for his grandson, John Hay II, the son of Clarence Hay. This John Hay, called "the dean of modern nature writing," is an author of books on natural history ("The Way to the Salt Marsh," "The Great House of Birds," "In the Company of Light" and many more.) The Orion Society, an environmental education organization and publisher, in 1991 established the John Hay Award to recognize significant achievement in the areas in which its namesake has excelled: writing that addresses the relationship between people and nature, environmental education, and conservation.

John Hay Elementary School, 201 Garfield St., Seattle, WA 98109, phone 206-378-2710.

John Hay High School, 2075 Stokes Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, 216-421-7700 -- Medical/Biology Studies Thematic Program

John Hay Air Base in the Phillipines. It was on the grounds of Club John Hay, a recreational facility on the base later operated as a private resort near Baguio City, that the Second Instrument of Surrender was signed by Japan and the United States on September 3, 1945.

John Hay Cigars -- "Enjoyed by thousands through out Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey & Delaware for over 116 Years, now available to everyone through the World Wide Web ! John Hay Cigars are 6" by 46, made in Pennsylvania using Pennsylvania Tobacco from Lancaster and York Counties. Available in Natural, Maduro & New Vanilla. Introductory priced, A box of 50 John Hay Cigars only $60.00." The company has a Web site at johnhaycigars.com. For more information, contact haycigar@aol.com.

John Hay in fiction

Panama, a novel of mystery and mayhem set against France's efforts to build a canal across the isthmus of Panama, cast John Hay in a morally ambiguous supporting role. Henry Adams is the Sherlock of the piece, and he visits Hay in Panama in 1892, where the diplomat is on a mission to manipulate events in the United States' favor a decade before the historical events of the Hay-Pauncefote and Hay-Bunau-Varilla treaties. Author Eric Zencey has Adams describe Hay as ". . . smooth of skin, tanned, dark-eyed . . . in some essential quality similar to an aquatic mammal -- looking this way and that, pausing wth head held high, as if to sniff the air. An otter. A mink. Minkish. Like an old, white-muzzled mink. Hay was graying at chin and temple, and had gone fully white in his long mustaches; these he kept long, while the dark hair on his cheek and jaw was trimmed close to the skin." The story moves to Paris and Adams pursues a murder tied to the French canal company, with his friend Hay impeding the investigation -- or at least withholding information. Panama's author, Eric Zencey, a professor of history at at Goddard College in Vermont, ties in much historical fact and suppposition about Adams.(Panama by Eric Zencey, 1995, New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux; ISBN: 0374229430)

John Hay in Hollywood

The Wind and the Lion (1975), was a big-screen look by macho writer-director John Milius at an international incident of Theodore Roosevelt's presidency, when an American had been kidnapped in the Middle East. Sean Connery and Candice Bergen are the kidnapper and kidnapee. Brian Keith does a bravura turn as Theodore Roosevelt. And the tall, lanky, rumpled John Huston is improbably cast as the compact, elegantly tailored John Hay. The film tramples on history in several other ways as well.