Barbara Hays was determined that people who read for Recordings for the Blind and Dyslexic were as nearly perfect as possible.
And if they mispronounced a word, halted or committed some other infraction, they got a note or word from her, said Deborah Weiner, a volunteer reader for 38 years.
Hays was almost 96 when she died Feb. 12 in Greenwood Village. A service is planned this summer in California.
“She was a wonderful woman but a taskmaster. She took it seriously and wanted to put out a professional product,” said Weiner, of Greenwood Village.
For more than 20 years, Hays, who began as a volunteer reader, was studio director of the Denver office of Recordings, recruiting and auditioning people as readers and serving as “quality control,” Weiner said.
Recordings does textbooks, so it was Hays’ job to get professionals to read books in whatever field was needed – lawyers, engineers, mathematicians or computer experts.
She didn’t want readers who were emotional. “She told us we weren’t there to be actors or actresses,” Weiner said.
“She could be tough,” said her daughter, Nancy Mueller of Littleton. “She was red-haired and had a fiery personality.”
During the last several years of her life, Hays, an avid reader, listened to books on tape because she had macular degeneration.
Hays was determined in everything she did. She was “walking the malls” for exercise early on and continued to walk 3 miles a day until she was 90. She amassed more than 10,000 miles.
Her son, William Hays of Kirkland, Wash., said he walked with her, “and it was no window-shopping stroll.” She walked six or seven days a week “and was in great shape,” he said. “She had remarkable self-discipline.”
Barbara E. Emanuels was born Feb. 24, 1911, in Berkeley, Calif., and moved with her family when she was 6 to Kobe, Japan, where her father, a businessman, was transferred.
She stayed there until age 14, when she came back to the U.S. to attend Parsons School in New York.
She earned her philosophy degree at the University of California, Berkeley.
She married George P. Hays on July 13, 1940. When World War II started, she got a job with the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, and her husband, an Army major, worked in the Pentagon.
Noting that his wife’s government rating was higher than his, he joked, “I have to salute her before I can kiss her.”
They moved to Denver in 1950. He died in 1967.
In addition to her son and her daughter, she is survived by four grandchildren.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
