Bill Hayes statue to be unveiled next month at Bowman Gray Stadium – Winston-Salem Journal

The ceremony, scheduled for noon Dec. 7, will be at the turn four field house, where the 12-foot statue will sit on a hill. Many high-profile guests are expected to attend, as well as several of his former players.

Hayes, 81, a former Winston-Salem State football coach and director of athletics, will forever look down on the field where he cut his teeth as a college football head coach in the mid-1970s.

“It’s going to be perfect,” said Donald Evans, a former WSSU player under Hayes who spearheaded the two-and-a-half-year process to honor him.

The statue, which was paid for by Hayes’ former players at WSSU and NC A&T, cost about $275,000, according to Evans. With the help of the WSSU Foundation, which focuses on the university’s long-term needs and increases fundraising effectiveness, the statue became a reality.

“We also had a lot of help from the city of Winston-Salem, and I can’t say enough about their guidance in all of this,” said Evans, who played for the Rams and Hayes in the mid-1980s and went on to play several years in the NFL. “And Winston-Salem State was great to work with as the process moved forward.”

Evans said Ben Rowe, assistant city manager, was a big help when the project was presented to the city.

“I also can’t say enough about the help that NC A&T has given us in all of this,” Evans said. “We couldn’t have done any of this without the team’s efforts and I know Bill is extremely excited to have his day for the ceremony.”

There was talk of unveiling the statue at homecoming next week when the Rams play Fayetteville State at 1:30 p.m., but with so much going on, Evans said it’s best to wait.

“There’s so much going on during homecoming week, so we just thought why not give the coach a day,” Evans said.

In June, the Winston-Salem City Council approved the final hurdle for Hayes to receive that day of recognition.

During his distinguished coaching career, which included stops at North Forsyth, Wake Forest, WSSU and NC A&T, he accumulated 195 career victories and six conference championships. He is second in the state behind only former Appalachian coach Jerry Moore for career wins at North Carolina.

Hayes, who was born in Durham just blocks from NC Central, went on to play for the Eagles before he started coaching. He is in the NC Central, NC A&T and WSSU Halls of Fame, as well as several others,

“It’s been a journey,” Hayes said earlier this summer. “Who would have thought the way I turned up, a kid with polio in a three-room house with shotguns?”

He came to WSSU in 1975 after being talked into taking the job by Big House Gaines, who was the athletic director and men’s basketball coach at the time. The story that Hayes, who was the first black assistant coach at Wake Forest, likes to tell is when he did Gaines a favor by coming across town to talk to several administrators while they were looking for a head coach.

“The next thing I know, I realize I’m the interviewee,” Hayes said a few years ago. “Coach Gaines just said, ‘we want you to practice here,’ and that was it.”

After resurrecting the program with CIAA championships in 1977 and 1978 and another in 1987, he moved to NC A&T at the Division I level and was there from 1988 to 2002. He later became the athletic director at NC Central, Florida A&M and WSSU before retiring in 2014.

As a WSSU encore in 2012, he was the athletic director when the Rams went 14-1 and lost in the Division II national championship game. In 2010, Hayes hired a young coach named Connell Mainer and the Rams became a Division II power for three straight seasons.

“This is such a great tribute to Bill because he touched so many of our lives at Winston-Salem State and NC A&T,” Evans said. “It’s funny, but everybody knows the rivalry is so strong between the Rams and the Aggies, but it’s something we all agreed on – to honor Coach Hayes with this statue.”