Hometown Funeral Draws 500 to Pay Tribute to Helen Hayes

NYACK, N.Y. — Helen Hayes was remembered Saturday at a hometown funeral miles from the bright lights of Broadway, with more than 500 friends packing the church she attended to say goodby to the first lady of the American theater.

“We are not burying a personage, we’re burying a person,” Cardinal John J. O’Connor told the crowd at St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church. “We’re not burying the first lady of the stage. We’re burying Helen Hayes MacArthur--woman, mother, wife, Catholic, beloved actress.”

Among the mourners were Hayes’ son, actor James MacArthur; his wife and their three children.

Hayes, dubbed theater’s first lady during a career that spanned more than eight decades, died Wednesday at age 92. She had been hospitalized with congestive heart failure a week earlier.

A longtime family friend, the Rev. Jerome Vereb, read Hayes’ preferred eulogy--a line from her memorable performance in “Victoria Regina,” the life of Queen Victoria: “Go to it, old girl. You’ve done very well.”

As the coffin was brought in, O’Connor placed Hayes’ small, white Communion booklet on top. She had asked that the booklet be placed on the coffin at her funeral.

Hayes was buried beside her husband, playwright Charles MacArthur, and daughter, Mary, who died of polio at age 19, in Oak Hill Cemetery. A memorial service is to be held later at the Helen Hayes Theater in Manhattan.