5 questions: 'Working on the Hubble Space Telescope, I told 200 men what to do.'

PEORIA’S SOUTH SIDE – At 4-foot, 11-inches tall, Mary Hayes has worked at never being dismissed, whether commenting about Medicare for All at a strategy session at the Peoria Public Library, helping residents at area nursing homes, or meeting with the East Peoria Homemakers at Fon Du Lac Park District or NASA engineers in Huntsville, Ala.

Tracing her family to Irish immigrants, the 76-year-old Hayes arrived in Peoria in a roundabout route. From a childhood in Scottsboro, Ala, through becoming a working woman in Chattanooga, Nashville, and finally Central Illinois. From Calhoun Junior College in Decatur, Ala., to Bradley University and Illinois Central College, she worked her way through school. (“I never had a student loan or anything,” she says). She’s worked as a Certified Nursing Assistant, dietician and a teacher of handicrafts such as knitting and crocheting.

Breaking up her busy day, Hayes responded to the Community Word’s “Five Questions” over coffee.

1. What are some of issues or interests you’re engaged in?

A few things: Let people vote! The environment. And be creative. I spend a lot of time working with yarn and creating patterns and designs for knitting and other projects.

2.  How else do you use your time – and your energy?

I spend a lot of time at my churches – the LDS (Latter Day Saints) and Bethany Missionary Church. And I take good naps, almost every day at 2 o’clock. And I don’t have a car, so if people need me, they pick me up. That’s fine with me.

3. What’s been some of your worst or best jobs?

I’ve taught classes once in a while at the Peoria Park District and Carver Center. I liked that; people wanted to be there. I also dipped ice cream in junior high, worked at a department store to save money to buy a London Fog coat my senior year, then I was a building clerk at Genesco, which made and exported shoes.

I guess my favorite job was working on the Hubble Space Telescope in Huntsville. I was my boss’s eyes and ears, so I told 200 men what to do.

4.  Any advice?

Start learning early; my son went from playing Nintendo as a kid to working with missiles in his 40s in Australia.

5. What’s with the red hat?

I’ve been in the Red Hat Society for years. In fact, I’m one of the ‘Queens,’ one of the chapter leaders.