Anthony Bernard Duncan Mayes (10 October 1929 – 23 October 2014) was a British broadcaster, university dean and author who founded America's first suicide prevention hotline.

Biography

Born in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, Mayes was educated at

University College School ("Slowly but surely") , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent day school , religion = , president = , head_label = Headmaster , head = Mark Beard , r_head_label = , r_he ...

. After studying classical civilizations at Downing College, Cambridge, he worked first as a school teacher of

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

and history. He was then ordained as an Anglican priest. Mayes emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

in 1958 and became an Episcopal worker-priest and director of a student house attached to

Judson Memorial Church The Judson Memorial Church is located on Washington Square South between Thompson Street and Sullivan Street, near Gould Plaza, opposite Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of the New York City borough of Manhattan. ...

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

and

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, th ...

. He then moved to the Diocese of California where he held a parish near

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. While in San Francisco, Mayes founded San Francisco Suicide Prevention, later used as a model throughout the United States. Openly gay himself, Mayes organized a sexuality study center for the

Episcopal Diocese of California The Episcopal Diocese of California is an ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) in Northern California. The founding Episcopal diocese in the state, once encompassing all of Californ ...

. This ministry, originally known as the Parsonage, was awarded the Episcopal Jubilee citation and later evolved into the present-da
Oasis
organization. In 1992 he abandoned religion and became an atheist. In 2012, despite his atheism he was later honored by the San Francisco Night Ministry and both the California Assembly and California Senate, Senate for his public service. Invited in 1984 to join the Rhetoric and Communication Studies faculty of the University of Virginia, in 1991 he was appointed assistant dean in the University of Virginia College of Arts and Sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, and then chair of the Communications department, finally founding the Program in Media Studies. He was awarded the Sullivan/Harrison award for mentoring and received a commendation by the University Seven Society. On retiring from the University in 1999 he published his autobiography ''Escaping God's Closet'', which received the 14th Lambda Literary Awards, Lambda Literary Award for religion and spirituality, and in 2000 University of Virginia alumni named the Bernard D. Mayes Award after him. His papers are kept in the National Public Broadcasting Archives of the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland, University of Maryland, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, and in the Library of Congress. In 1991 he co-founded the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual Faculty, Staff and Graduate Student Association at the University of Virginia, known as UVA Pride, and the Serpentine Society. On his retirement in 1999, the Serpentine Society gave Mayes a lifetime achievement award for his accomplishments and for his contributions to UVA in particular. Each year since then, the Serpentine Society has honored a distinguished graduate of UVA with a Bernard D. Mayes Award for service and leadership in the LGBT community. Mayes also received a lifetime achievement award from San Francisco Suicide Prevention. In 2010 he was given a prestigious Jefferson Award for Public Service, most notably for his suicide prevention work still used as a model nationwide. He last resided in San Francisco.

Broadcasting career

Beginning in 1958 Mayes worked as a journalist for the BBC and other networks including, from 1964 to 1968, KPFA-FM in Berkeley CA. In 1968 he helped organize the public broadcasting system in the United States, becoming first the founder of KQED-FM and Executive Vice President of KQED (TV), KQED TV in San Francisco, then a co-founder and first working chairman of National Public Radio. He then became a consultant for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington, D.C., advising universities and communities across the country. Mayes's dramatic works included: Homer's ''Odyssey'', the ''Agamemnon (play), Agamemnon'' of Aeschylus and Plato's ''Phaedo'', each adapted from the original Greek; ''The Lord of the Rings (1979 radio series), The Lord of the Rings'', a 1979 radio series in which he played the part of Gandalf; and several of Dickens' novels. Mayes received financial support from the National Endowment for the Arts for a dramatization of the life of Thomas Jefferson. He also recorded several books for Blackstone Audio (including Edward Gibbon, Gibbon's ''Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', Augustine's ''Confessions (Augustine), Confessions'' and ''The City of God, City of God'', Ludwig von Mises, Mises's ''Human Action'', Plutarch's ''Parallel Lives, Lives'', and James Boswell, Boswell's ''Life of Samuel Johnson'') and was often heard in The Black Mass, Erik Bauersfeld's series of dramatic adaptations for Berkeley, California, Berkeley's FM station KPFA. An illustrated collection of Mayes's lighter broadcast pieces was published in 1985 under the title ''This is Bernard Mayes in San Francisco''.

Death

Mayes died on 23 October 2014, of sepsis.Death Certificate of Bernard Mayes, certified by Prescott Woodruff, M.D. on 28 October 2014.

References

External links

Bernard Mayes's personal web site at the University of Virginia

Bernard Mayes papers
at the University of Maryland Libraries
Escaping God's Closet (limited preview at Google Book Search

Soupism website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mayes, Bernard 1929 births 2014 deaths British expatriate academics in the United States British non-fiction writers British male journalists People educated at University College School Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge British atheists Writers from London British gay writers University of Virginia faculty Writers from San Francisco Gay academics 21st-century LGBT people

Biography

Broadcasting career

Death

References

Further reading

External links