Canonsburg Senior Center celebrates Black History Month with Harold Hayes
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
Harold Hayes, retired reporter with KDKA news, shares his personal history during a keynote speech at Canonsburg Senior Center Wednesday.
Katherine Mansfield/Observer-Reporter
More than 50 people gathered at the Canonsburg Senior Center Wednesday to hear keynote speaker Harold Hayes, center. Guests included former NAACP Washington County Chapter president Andrew Goudy, and new President David Gatling.
Canonsburg Senior Center’s Black History Month celebrations continued Wednesday when more than 50 people gathered for a keynote speech by Harold Hayes, retired KDKA reporter. Hayes offered a brief history of his own family in a memorable speech sprinkled with historical facts and infused with jokes. He told attendees about his Aunt Hilda, who chaired the social studies department at a North Carolina high school, and about his parents – Hayes’ father was a Baptist minister and his mother, a social worker and teacher in the Pittsburgh Public Schools. “My takeaway from my family history: I was influenced by it as a reporter,” said Hayes, whose career spanned four decades and included coverage of a KKK march on Pittsburgh in the early 1990s and took him to the Vatican, where he shared Pope John Paul II’s funerals with Southwestern Pennsylvanians. “I couldn’t help thinking about my mother’s history as a social worker, a teacher and a minister’s wife when I covered crime. I couldn’t help thinking about my grandma and her fussing about the demolition of Bethel AME Church when I covered the demolition of the Civic Arena. You’re a product of all that came before,” he said.