Floyd William "Bill" Hayden

Floyd Wm. Hayden
November 28, 1939 - November 20, 1990

His friends called him "Bill". He had a sarcastic sense of humor, was a beloved and sorely missed man. See below for more narrative.

He worked as an electronics engineer for the United States Coast Guard for 27 years (ranking a CWO4). This was predictable having come from a military family. He enlisted when he was 17, much to his step-mother's chagrin.

Things Bill liked:

His daughter Sabina remembers him watching "60 Minutes" and "The Wonder Years" TV shows with her and really liking him. He also enjoyed "Married with Children" and "Cosby" and loved watching the Olympics
Seafood
Fishing (especially with his Uncle Joe Ferranti) - When he retired from the Coast Guard he had to keep himself busy, so he studied oceanography and became a commercial fisherman for the love of it.
Reading - especially Reader�s Digest and their series of condensed books, author James A. Michener; author of Chesapeake, Alaska, etc. and The New Yorker and National Geographic magazines (he loved New York City)
Skin and scuba diving
Racquetball
Water skiing (he was a natural)
Linguistics (he became fluent in Italian and could get by in French and Spanish)
Alaska and the American Northwest in general (where his ancestors were from)
Observing Olympic sports
Electronic gadgets (after all, he WAS an electronics engineer for the Coast Guard)

Some things Dad used to always say:

Human beings are social animals. We need to socialize or we die.
You can be anything you want to be. Think big! You don't want a house in the country, you want a mansion. You don't want a Mercedes Benz, you want a limousine.
Anything can be learned from a book. (Little did he know that eventually anything could be learned from a linked computer terminal.)
Cry quiet (when his kids used to bawl).
Did I stutter?
You can't learn it through osmosis?
Did you read the instruction manual?

He was raised in Hawaii and Arizona, but born in California. He also lived in Italy, Spain and New York City. When he met Pina in Italy, he learned to speak Italian (he was 1/4 Italian himself). He had an aptitude for languages, as did Pina. He got by in French and Spanish when in Europe but he spoke Italian pretty fluently for someone who learned it in adulthood. He was accepted by his in-laws as one of their own. He used to explain how European languages are all related and that in some instances word patterns can be used to help find what one is trying to say, especially with Italian, which is so close to Latin.

He loved to read; he loved the ocean and fishing (not surprising from someone born in Monterey, California). In fact, he became a commercial fisherman for pleasure when he "retired" (something he knew he could never do) from the Coast Guard in 1984. He was not a perfect man, but he deserves to be remembered as yet another victim of the very addictive cigarettes that are pushed on children every day. Perhaps if it hadn't been so cool for him to light up at 13 years of age, he would be alive today instead of just having missed his 51st birthday. Ironically, his biological mother died at the same age (50) from smoking as well.

Like me and his brother, Dan Stief, Dad was very spellbound by Barbra Streisand. He was remembered debating with others on how she was the most talented singer, if not the most talented woman in the world "by far". He was also a big fan of Karen Carpenter, Clearance Clearwater, Dionne Warwick and Neil Diamond. I think he must have overloaded when Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand did the You Don't Bring Me Flowers duet!

His favorite comedian was Bill Cosby, because Bill was very pro-education and did not curse when he told jokes.

Bill was a victim of the tobacco industry. Let's get that straight because some people have debated it. The attending physician in the emergency room told Bill's wife that Bill died because he resumed smoking after his quintuple bypass a few years earlier. Ironically, Bill hated cigarettes and smoking. He could not quit despite his efforts. His cause of death was an aortic aneurysm.