Matthew Messino Hayman

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Matthew Messino-Hayman (September 14, 1953 - June 15, 2016) died of a heart attack. He was on the road at the time and died alone in a hotel in Illinois.  

I knew Matthew best at the beginning and the end of his life. We grew up together in West Lafayette, IN, where I was friends with him, his parents, Allen and Ruth, and his sisters, Sarah and Rachel. His time at West Lafayette High School was rocky and exciting. He butted heads with the administration more than once, though to my understanding it was always because he expected to be treated with respect.

Matthew was a lover of literature and music and art in all its forms. I first got to know him in his parents’ house on Salisbury Street in the late 1960s. The Haymans were friends of William H. Gass, who taught in the Philosophy Department at Purdue and was just beginning to be recognized as one of America’s great fiction writers and essayists. No writer's work has meant more to me. I interviewed him when I was in college and wrote my undergraduate honors thesis on his novel Omensetter's Luck. It was at the Haymans' house on Salisbury Street in West Lafayette that I first met Bill Gass and learned that there were people who had brandy after dinner. I was at the Haymans' when Ruth came running in from the phone in the kitchen, yelling "Bill Gass just had twins!" It was in that house, at Allen's 60th birthday party, that my wife Elizabeth and I met. Matthew also admired Bill Gass’s work and we talked about it often over the years. Matthew also loved the Henry Wiggens novels of Mark Harris, the best known of which is Bang the Drum Slowly. (Mark Harris taught at Purdue for a while in the late 1960s as well and his children went to WLHS. Hester Harris was in my class at West Side and also died not long ago.) I remember Matthew sitting on the couch in their living room reading those novels and urging me to read them as well. Matthew was always full of enthusiasms and recommendations.

In recent years Matthew and I reunited on Facebook and over the phone. Matthew wrestled with life, but he loved it too, especially family, friends, books, ideas, music, politics, bicycles, and the Rocky Mountains. He was fiercely devoted to justice and loved a good debate, but he always listened to others and was willing to change his mind. I miss him very much.

Matthew’s wife Daria has asked that if you want to remember Matthew, you do it with a donation to your local library, homeless shelter, or food bank.

Ned Stuckey-French (WLHS class of 1968)