Father's Day at M&Q

Celebrate Father's Day with Nick Hayes as he recounts his own father's life and accomplishments--4:00pm, Sunday, June 20, at Magers & Quinn.

And One Fine Morning is a memoir of Hayes’ father, Mark, an award-winning architect and artist who was equally at home sitting in the backyard or at a North Side Minneapolis restaurant or bar, laughing and telling stories. In the prime of his life in 1954, a series of heart attacks and strokes “cut him down, cost him his left leg, impair his speech and cripple his gift for painting and drawing,” Nick Hayes wrote. Two years later, one last heart attack killed Mark Hayes.

“Nick Hayes has written a moving tribute to his father--an artist, architect and dreamer who died too young but left behind a first-class legacy of buildings . . . a wonderful memoir of growing up in Minneapolis in the 1950s."--Larry Millett, author of AIA Guide to the Twin Cities, The Lost Twin Cities

“I’m going to do selected readings that I think gives the audience a good snapshot of the nature of the book,” Hayes said. “Some of those passages just reflect upon the story of my father, and a lot of which I’ll be reading reflects on the Irish-American community of Minneapolis in the 1920s and 1930s.”Although Nick Hayes says it is still difficult to talk about Mark’s death over 50 years later, he will conclude the reading with a portrait of the day his father passed away.

“Nick Hayes delivers a brilliant, touching and engrossing epic, which rings the bell of recognition as it moves gracefully through a rich and varied terrain. His captivating work captures, with respectful verve, not only the travail, but the magic, humor, and joy, that endures in lives well-lived.”--Carol Connolly, poet-laureate of St. Paul and author of All This and More: New and Selected Poems and Payments Due

Nick Hayes is professor of history at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University and University Chair in Critical Thinking at SJU. He is a regularly featured commentator for the daily public affairs program Midday on issues ranging from political turmoil in post-communist Europe to the war in Iraq. He has appeared on PBS’s The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and Religion and Ethics News Weekly.

Details are here.--David E