Thursday, March 17, 2005 | 9:11 a.m.
Alma Hayes never won any organization's Mother of the Year award.
But to many of her 17 children, five step-children, 98 grandchildren, about 200 great-grandchildren, an estimated 100 great-great grandchildren and an unknown number of great-great-great grandchildren, she was the mother of the century.
Raised in poverty on a Mississippi plantation, the North Las Vegas resident and granddaughter of slaves co-owned a farm with her first husband in the 1930s and '40s and, between 1964 and her retirement in 1976, worked as a maid in major Las Vegas resorts to put food on the table and clothe her brood.
Hayes died Monday at age 91 at Nathan Adelson Hospice-West. Her children today are remembering her for the love she gave them and her community.
"Mom had burdens, but she kept them to herself, so we grew up never knowing we were poor," said third-oldest child Marcus Morris of North Las Vegas. "We were just happy for the pinto beans and rice she put on the table and for how she encouraged us to love and respect others."
Services for Hayes, a North Las Vegas resident of 41 years, who lived in the same five-bedroom home on Rossmoyne Avenue near Lake Mead Boulevard and Revere Street since 1965, will be 1 p.m. Saturday at Carver Baptist Church, 1221 N. J St. She was known at Carver as the "mother of the church," her family said.
Graveside services will be 2:30 p.m. in Woodlawn Cemetery. Visitation is scheduled from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. Friday at Palm Mortuary, 1325 N. Main St. All of her children were single births over a period of 27 years. She had her first at age 16 and her last at age 43. At one point, 13 of them were living in a four-bedroom home on their farm in Mississippi.
"We were farmers so everything we ate we grew or raised," said child No. 5, Lee Allen Morris of North Las Vegas. "There was no money. We did a lot of trading and the younger kids wore hand-me-downs. Mom and dad and the rest of us worked the fields from sunup to sundown. We were a close family."
Despite the difficulties of raising so many children and tending the farm, Hayes developed a lifelong passion for gardening, which she still did in her late 80s, as well as drive a car and cook meals.
"My fondest memory of mom is her working in the garden at our home in Louisiana surrounded by so many beautiful colors of flowers," said 12th child Estella Murray of Las Vegas. "She always kept a beautiful home -- and a clean house was a must."
Anna Hayes, the 17th child who is celebrating her 48th birthday today, said her mother "was a proud woman who was always doing things to help others" in her family or through her church work.
Born Alma Hoye on Aug. 23, 1913, in Jefferson County, Miss., to farmers Edgar and Jannie Hoye, she dropped out of high school and married her first husband Marcus Morris.
Asked why his mother decided to have so many children, her son Marcus said, "It rained a lot in Mississippi, and there was nothing else to do."
Estella, however, said that her mother once told her that while she had no regrets about having a large family she would have practiced birth control if it had existed or was available in her youth.
The family had grown to 13 when it moved to Louisiana to pick cotton. Her husband Marcus died in 1947 and she married farmhand Albert Hayes, with whom she had four more children in addition to raising his five children from a previous marriage. He died in 1976.
The family moved to North Las Vegas in 1964 because the wages for picking cotton in Louisiana were too low. Alma soon found work as a maid in downtown Las Vegas before taking similar jobs at the old Castaways on the Strip and the Sahara.
Hayes also is survived by four other sons, Elmore Hayes of Las Vegas, Thomas Morris and Wade Morris, both of Los Angeles, and Johnnie Morris of Apple Valley; five other daughters, Alma Stevenson and Willie Mae Lexing, both of North Las Vegas, and Jannie Murphy, Sophoronia Riley and Carrie Blade, all of Los Angeles; and five stepchildren, Elwood Hayes and Mae Hayes of North Las Vegas, Gennie Morris of Las Vegas, James Hayes of Grand Rapids, Mich. and Jessie Hayes of Jackson, Miss.
Hayes was preceded in death by sons William Morris -- her first born -- and Alex Morris and daughter Rosetter Morris.
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