BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Milford missionary Robert Hayes and his adult children, John and Sarah, also missionaries, died Wednesday night in an automobile wreck in Ghana.
The elder Hayes had lived in the West African country for 37 years before retiring to the Tristate in 1988. Ghanaian-born John and Sarah remained in West Africa as missionaries after their parents left; they were taking their visiting father to the airport for his return flight to the United States when their car collided with a tractor-trailer rig.
Mr. Hayes, 72, worked in the Bearing Precious Seed ministry at First Baptist Church of Milford.
"It was a shock to everybody, pretty devastating," said Sam Caudill, who runs the ministry. "He had a burden for the whole continent of Africa, to reach Africa for Christ. He lived for Africa and died for Africa."
Robert Hayes and his wife, Alice, natives of New York, were supported for 25 years by First Baptist, said Senior Pastor Charles Keen. John was born in Ghana in 1957 and Sarah in 1959, the couple's only children, friends said. Thursday was to have been the Hayeses' 49th wedding anniversary.
The parents moved to Milford to work for Bearing Precious Seed, which expects to print 3 million Bibles this year in 20 languages. The ministry then forwards the Bibles to missionaries to distribute. Robert Hayes spoke to American churches to raise money for the effort.
"He saw it as something productive he could do for the rest of his life," said Pastor Don Melton, the church's associate pastor. "He was very unorthodox in that many of us look forward to retiring so we can kick back and do nothing, but he never wanted to do that. He was the personification of godliness, he really was."
John and Sarah Hayes continued their parents' church-planting work in West Africa with First Baptist's support.
John Hayes leaves a wife and three children who were living in Ghana but are expected to return to the United States. Alice Hayes was in the Cincinnati area at the time of the accident.
Funeral arrangements have not yet been announced.
