Bruce Jolliffe Hayward (April 13, 1928 - August 3,2011)

Bruce J. Hayward died at his home in Silver City on August 3,2011. Known primarily as a mammalogist, BJ was also a dedicated bird man, and an accomplished vertebrate zoologist in general, indeed, one of that disappearing breed of broadly trained and vastly knowledgeable "old time" naturalists. He eschewed the accelerating trend of over-specialization and the neglect of diverse disciplinary training of biologists, who enter the field knowing more and more about less and less.

I had been part of the New Mexico Western College Biology Department only three years when John Harlan, the chairman, charged me locating a versatile zoologist to add to our faculty. Upon learning that Bruce Hayward had earned his preliminary degrees at the University of Michigan, under William Henry Burt, and received his Ph.D. studying under E. L. Cockrum at the University of Arizona, I suspected that he might be our man. After meeting him, I knew it. The decision of whom to hire was left to me, and I never regretted recommending Bruce He began teaching at what is now Western New Mexico University the following fall, and we worked together for nearly three decades.

Bruce was little interested in being a research biologist but he was a dedicated teacher. No one at our institution worked harder than he. He never thought of his as an "8 to 5 job," and he spent almost as many nocturnal hours in the Science Building as he did during the day -- preparing specimens, building and curating the mammal and herp collections, and much more. Students were of paramount importance to him. He loved teaching, and thrived on the camaraderie we developed with students in those days. He fully appreciated his and my good fortune of working together doing what we most enjoyed. He once remarked to me, "Dale, we've got the world by the tail here," and in truth we did, for quite a span of years.

Bruce seemed to be happy in almost any setting, but nowhere more than in the field with students and/or colleagues. He was in his element tending mist nets or checking a rodent trap line on warm desert nights, eating around the campfire with coyotes wailing and grasshopper mice singing nearby. Never did I know him to be more content than during those wonderful times in the Mara or Serengeti where each day we were surrounded by Africa's vastness and its magnificent megafauna. I introduced Bruce to East Africa in 1963, and he, too, became enamored of the continent, returning again and again, to the east, the west, and the south, concentrating on small mammals but delighting in all aspects of the continent's natural history and cultures. And not only Africa; Bruce traveled the world, seeing far more of our planet than most people ever dream of.

Cuisine was an important aspect of Bruce's travels; food never was far from his mind, even in the field (where he customarily saved all carcasses of skinned mice and other critters for his emblematic "varmint stew.") When abroad, he also appreciated native dress, and samples of exotic garb would accompany him home where they were worn often. Diverse headgear from foreign and domestic junkets was featured regularly. One never knew quite what to expect. One yuletide season, a pair of felt antlers adorned his chapeau as he made his usual holiday rounds. Now, alas, there will be no more such visits, or of those lengthy, uninhibited, shockingly unedited, yet wonderfully revealing Christmas missives that summarized Bruce's invariably eventful year.

If a single word could have described the man it would have been "jolly'; it conveys his intrinsic good nature and pronounced joie de vivre. He exuded friendliness. I knew him well for over half a century, and I never knowingly met a person who truly disliked him. Of course, there were disgruntled students along the way who failed to meet his demanding standards, but even those poor performers respected him. I remember one of our university presidents referring to him as "a good soul," and he was all of that. Although generally easy-going, he could be stubborn, often exasperating, at times irascible, but always lovable. And risibility defined his being; the hearty, infectious laugh was a trademark. It's fitting that among his expressed "last wishes" there be no funeral, no memorial, but a gathering of friends simply to "tell Hayward stories, and laugh."

 Dale Zimmerman