Amagansett Facility To Be Named In Honor Of Lee Hayes

East Hampton Town plans to dedicate the town’s sporting facilities on Abrahams Path in honor of Lee Hayes, the former member of the renowned Tuskegee Airmen, whose sprawling family lived in the former Freetown neighborhood nearby.

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc introduced a proposal on Tuesday at a Town Board work session to dedicate the Amagansett Youth Park in Mr. Hayes’s honor this fall, commemorating his place in town history, the role of the Tuskegee Airmen and the Freetown neighborhood — a portion of which had so many members of the Hayes family living in it that it was often referred to as “Hayesville.”

“The Amagansett Youth Park seemed like an appropriate location to honor Lee Hayes’s life and impact on our community and country as its at the edge of Hayesville, and is along the route he often walked when he went to the American Legion,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. “There are a huge number of local people who are descended from him and … this is part of an under-told story in our town.”

All five the of the Town Board members applauded the proposal.

“This is long overdue,” Councilwoman Sylvia Overby said.

Mr. Hayes went through flight training with the racially segregated aviation unit that was trained at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama, and became known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Mr. Hayes completed the training as both a fighter pilot and then as a bombardier, but the war ended before he was deployed. After the war, Mr. Van Scoyoc recounted on Tuesday, he was discharged from the Army as a highly skilled pilot, but, like the other Tuskegee Airmen, was unable to get work as a pilot in the burgeoning commercial airline industry, like white veterans could.

He returned to East Hampton and worked as a janitor and property manager, raising two children. Mr. Hayes died in 2013 at the age of 91, in the “Hayesville” home he built himself more than 60 years earlier.

Councilman David Lys said that the many visitors to the park will help make hundreds of local children and adults aware of Mr. Hayes’s role in the community.

“It’s the level of distinction that Mr. Hayes deserves,” he said.

Mr. Van Scoyoc suggested that the park have a memorial plaque installed with a biography of Mr. Hayes and a scanable QR code that would link mobile phones to more information about Mr. Hayes, East Hampton’s historically black neighborhood and the Tuskegee Airmen.

​The supervisor said that he would like to formalize the dedication of the park this fall, but said that family members had noted his 100th birthday would have been on June 20 of next year, the day after the “Juneteenth” anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in 1865, and suggested that it would be a good time to have a broader honoring of Mr. Hayes and the history of the Black community in East Hampton.

“I think it will fit nicely with our effort to better tell the story of everyone who lived in East Hampton,” he said.