Hayes Clayton remembered

At Marietta High School, football players are usually remembered so long as their athletic feats still reverberate through Northcutt Stadium on Friday nights — names and numbers recited when a wide receiver hauls in a long pass or a linebacker makes a bone-jarring tackle that brings the home crowd to its feet.

For most, the Friday night fame fades quickly after they graduate, their numbers taken by new players.

That was true for Hayes Clayton Jr., who started at defensive end for the Blue Devils in the 1995 football season. Most people in the stands that season didn't know him well, although, like all the other Blue Devils on the field, we hung with him on every play that came his way.

And then the season ended. He graduated, and we lost track of him.

Not so for James "Friday" Richards, who has coached at Marietta for more than 30 years. The young Clayton was a member of Richards' team during his first year as head coach. And Richards pays attention to what happens to his kids when they leave his program.

So, last week, it fell to the coach and his assistants to locate the players from his '95 team and tell them the bad news: Army Capt. Hayes Clayton Jr. was dead, killed in action in Iraq on Christmas Day. Clayton's death was among those that pushed U.S. military forces toward the ominous, if arbitrary, number of 3,000 fatalities since the invasion began.

After high school, Clayton had enrolled at a small college in Birmingham; later, he transferred to Fort Valley State University, where his football career proved short-lived. But he found something more promising at Fort Valley — Army ROTC. Upon graduation in 2002, he started his active-duty military career.

While in college — and even later, when he was back home on leave — Clayton would occasionally visit his former coach. Richards was immensely proud of him, calling him "one of the special ones."

Clayton's Army career took him to Camp Casey in South Korea, where he met his wife, Army 1st Lt. Monica Clayton. The couple had a baby boy, Hayes Clayton III; he was born last August, just before his father was shipped out to Iraq.

Stationed with the 1st Infantry Division out of Fort Riley, Kan., Clayton was assigned to train Iraqi soldiers. While helping lead Iraqi troops in combat in Balad, 40 miles north of Baghdad, he was killed by an improvised explosive device.

Rob Simpson, a defensive end with Clayton at Marietta, remembered the long, sweaty hours the two of them put in on the practice field. Simpson believes the lessons they learned as members of a larger team — as well as their specific assignments on that team — were fundamental to Clayton's success later in life.

There probably are similar stories about all soldiers killed in the line of duty, not just those who are former high school football players. The families and friends of soldiers killed in any war could probably share tales of hard work, duty, determination and sacrifice.

Still, the death toll from this war feels somehow different. Not because of the politics or the endless red-vs.-blue split over whether the United States should have toppled Saddam Hussein. This one seems different because it remains remote to many Americans.

Few of us have experienced it through the loss of a loved one. Deaths in Iraq remain several times removed for most of us. When we hear the name of a local casualty, we try to remember where we have might have heard the name before.

That's why I spent part of last weekend searching for a '95 Marietta football program that my daughter had saved from that season. Every year, football players at Marietta High have their pictures made with their parents.

It's a wonderful tradition, highlighting the heady times young athletes experience when a whole community pulls for them under the lights on the playing field.

There's a picture of Hayes with his parents, Marlena and the Rev. Hayes Clayton Sr., then a pastor in Marietta, now in Meriwether County. Their son looks so young. They look so proud. I can't imagine what they are going through.

When Hayes was a football player, the home crowd in the stadium heard this description of him most often: "Good kid, from a good family." Indeed.

The funeral is set for Saturday, with burial at the Georgia National Cemetery in Canton.

On that day his family, his coaches and his teammates and many admirers will proudly carry Army Capt. Hayes Clayton Jr. to a place of honor well beyond the walls of Northcutt Stadium. He was a hero long after his football career ended.

From the Journal Constitution

Related Link:
Hayes Clayton dies of injuries from I.E.D.