Marion Hay Collection

Marion Jewell Hay was born near Irving, Kansas, March 9, 1900. She received her secondary school education in Colorado, graduating from the Cheyenne Mountain High School in Colorado Springs. She received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois in 1921, following which she taught a year at Henderson Brown College, Arkadelphia, Arkansas. She attended Ohio State University on a scholarship in 1923, receiving the degree of Master of Arts in 1924. During the year 1924-25, Mrs. Hay held a graduate assistantship in the Department of Principles of Education and an assistantship in Spanish. From September 1925 to December 1928 she served as an instructor of the Department of Romance Languages while pursuing the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education. In 1929 she became a professor of education at Florida State College for Women, and remained at Florida State until her retirement in 1967. Marion Jewell Hay traveled extensively before she came to Florida State. Among her travels were foreign study trips to Universidad Nacional de Mejico, 1922-1924; Centro de Estudios Historicos (Madrid) and Alliance Francaise and Sorbonne (Paris) 1928-1929. In 1926, after her marriage to Harry Hilts Hay, he accompanied her abroad.

The couple began taking students from F. S. C. W. to Europe during summer vacations. This activity blossomed into a travel agency in the 1930s. In 1941 Harry Hilts Hay, after purchasing an airplane and learning to fly, was accepted as pilot by the British Royal Air Force. On his way to serve in Great Britian his small ship was attacked by a German submarine. He was not among the survivors of the attack. Mrs. Hay took a leave of absence from F. S. C. W for six years to serve on the Board of Censorship and with the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency. At this time Mrs. Hay sold the travel agency, and upon her retirement from F. S. U. repurchased it. She served as President of Tallahassee Travel and Tours until 1978. Besides her lengthy teaching career and wide travels she was also touched by hardship suffered by those around her. Freeing political prisoners, helping those who had experienced and been impacted by war , and providing health care for needy rural school children were part of her relief efforts. Various scholarships were financed from her own pocket in an attempt to insure that deserving students remained enrolled at Florida State.