Sir Jack Arnold Hayward (14 June 1923 – 13 January 2015) was an English businessman, property developer, philanthropist, and president of English football club Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Biography
Early life
thumb|right|Stowe School
The only son of Charles William Hayward, an industrialist,
At the outbreak of the Second World War, he cycled to Oxford to volunteer to fight, eventually joining the Royal Air Force (RAF). He received flight training in Yorkshire and Clewiston, Florida, in the United States.
He served first as a pilot officer in 671 Squadron operating under South East Asia Command (SEAC) in India, flying Dakota transporter aircraft for the supply of the 14th Army in Burma. In 1946, he was demobilised as a flight lieutenant.
Career
After demobilisation he began work in Rotary Hoes, part of the Firth Cleveland group of companies formed by his father, Sir Charles Hayward, as an agricultural equipment salesman in South Africa. In 1951, he founded the American arm of the group in New York, where he was based for five years before relocating to the Bahamas as it was a Sterling area.
Hayward became the owner and chairman of Wolves, then in the Second Division following back-to-back promotions, after buying the club in May 1990 for £2.11 million. to buy the SS Great Britain and, in 2011, £500,000 to the Vulcan to the Sky fund. He also put funds into repairing the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital on the Falkland Islands after the Falklands War and was named as the mystery benefactor of £1 million to the South Atlantic Fund to aid families of British servicemen killed or injured in that war.
Hayward appeared in the 1970 BBC Chronicle programme; "The Great Iron Ship" which documented the recovery and subsequent voyage of the SS Great Britain from the Falklands to Bristol.
Political views
Hayward was a donor to the Liberal Party in the 1970s, having met its leader Jeremy Thorpe (one of the West Country MPs who campaigned to get Lundy Island purchased for the nation) in 1969. He backed the party in the October 1974 general election, enabling Thorpe to travel around the coast by hovercraft on speaking tours and the party to field a record number of parliamentary candidates, although only 13 were returned as MPs. Thorpe and his wife Marion were guests at Hayward's home in the Bahamas, and Thorpe offered unsuccessfully to find a buyer for Freeport in return for payment when Hayward and his colleagues were considering selling.
Hayward was awarded £50,000 in libel damages against the Sunday Telegraph after an article published in 1978 accused him of being the paymaster in the alleged conspiracy to murder Norman Scott in the Thorpe affair, of which Thorpe was cleared. In 1979, he gave evidence for the Crown in court when Thorpe was implicated in the affair, letters from Thorpe that Hayward had kept being among the exhibits. When Sanghera asked him why he had thus supported the Liberal Party, he replied, "Well, I used to say, 'I don't want anything to do with Europe.' And Jeremy [Thorpe] used to say, 'My dear fella, if we joined Europe, with our expertise on how to run an empire, we'll be in charge of Europe! We will be the master race!' And I would say, 'How much do you want?' Also, I felt sorry for them."
With his crumpled clothes and pockets stuffed with bits of paper, it was observed of Hayward that he looked “more like an absent-minded retired geography teacher than one of the richest men in the world”. He relaxed by watching cricket — he was a life member of Surrey County Cricket Club — and taking part in amateur dramatics — he built a modern theatre at Freeport for the local Players’ Guild, of which he was a leading actor.
Hayward died on 13 January 2015 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, aged 91.
Legacy
thumb|Sir Jack Hayward statue outside [[The Molineux]]
The Sir Jack Hayward High School in Freeport, Bahamas, was named after him in 1998. Wolverhampton Wanderers' training complex at Compton is also named after him, as is Jack Hayward Way, a street beside the Molineux ground, previously Molineux Way, that was renamed in commemoration of his 80th birthday in 2003.
The Grand Bahama Highway Bridge is to be renamed the Sir Jack Hayward Bridge. Hayward had campaigned for its building for 10 years before it was launched with a contract signing ceremony in May 2014 at which he was present. The bridge was commissioned in March 2016.
The South Bank of Molineux, known as the Jack Harris Stand at the time, was renamed the Sir Jack Hayward Stand after his death.
See also
- List of people from Wolverhampton
- Dunmaglass Shooting Estate