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Ruth Hayes contributed steadily and quietly to Rehoboth's distinctive Bandstand shows
Cape Gazette
It’s amazing how many people Rehoboth Beach accommodates in the summertime. Last Sunday night, the week before the July Fourth weekend, the Boardwalk literally groaned with the weight of thousands of people enjoying the misty air along the ocean. Even in the very last bits of light at the end of the day, children and teenagers squeezed out the final moments of romping in the surf while parents and grandparents, brothers and sisters and friends watched from the beach or the white-painted benches on the Boardwalk.
At Funland, where shrieks and scary noises bristled from the upstairs Haunted House ride, crowds of people milled between rides and games. They hammered at popping, plastic moles and whacked metal lily pads with rubber hammers to knock goopy frogs into a pond of flowers. They rode up and down in stomach-turning rides, sat in the arms of mommies and daddies on the gently galloping horses of the merry-go-round, and stood five deep waiting to pump quarters into the everlasting Skee-Ball alleys – Rehoboth’s version of slot machines.
The ocean end of Rehoboth Avenue is ground zero for Rehoboth’s summer scene. The beach, the Boardwalk, the Avenue – the French fry stands and arcades – they all fan out from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union fountain where little children can stand on a squared off rock to drink fresh water and look through the stone arch toward the bandstand. Those looking as they drank last Sunday night would have seen bright lights shining on the brass of a saxophone and the colorful bodies of electric guitars. The shows serve as a magnet for people sauntering along with ice cream cones and buckets of salty and vinegary fries. Single people and large and smaller groups fill the regimented rows of benches facing the Bandstand as they have for more than 40 years. The Bandstand shows are a hallmark of summer in Rehoboth and they include everything from rock and roll bands and magicians to bluegrass bands, choruses and high school jazz bands.
Sunday night’s show, however, was markedly different than others. Ruth Hayes wasn’t there. Ailing and failing, she was in the hospital drifting off to meet her maker. She died on Tuesday night, June 27.
For the entire history of the Bandstand, Ruth Hayes and her husband, Bill, coordinate shows for Rehoboth Beach.
Bill Hayes was known as the Rehoboth Beach music teacher “who played all instruments and taught all instruments. The shows started on the green in 1962,” said Corey Groll, who helped Ruth by handling sound for the shows. “Bill then designed an elaborate bandstand complex a few years later but Rehoboth didn’t have the money to do everything Bill wanted, so this is what they got instead.”
Bill died in 1994 and Ruth kept up the scheduling that she had become increasingly more responsible for as Bill’s health failed. It’s a big job handling weeks and weeks of shows through the summer but Ruth did it with little complaint and dependable steadiness. “She had her own ways,” said Groll. “I’d call it old school but it worked and the shows have attracted lots of people through the years.”
Rehoboth Beach City Manager Greg Ferrese chocked back emotions as he spoke of Ruth. “She and I worked together for 23 years. It’s terrible to lose good people like this who have done so much good for the city. First Mr. Brittingham [Hank] and now Ruth.”
The last show Hayes attended, according to Groll, was the pep rally show on Saturday, June 18, leading up to the 50th annual Blue-Gold All-Star Football Game. Her death comes as the era of the existing Bandstand draws to a close. As part of the Rehoboth Avenue Streetscape project, the bandstand will be razed in the next year or so to make way for a new bandstand complex that will probably more closely approximate what Bill Hayes had in mind so many years ago.
Ruth and Bill Hayes are among that group of people who have worked so steadily and quietly over the past few decades to give Rehoboth Beach the distinctive character that draws so many people of all ages for fun and relaxation.
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