Bernard Mayes

Anthony Bernard Duncan Mayes (10 October 1929 – 23 October 2014) was a British broadcaster, university dean and author who founded America's first suicide prevention hotline.

After studying classical civilizations at Downing College, Cambridge, Mayes worked first as a school teacher of Latin, Greek and history. He was then ordained as an Anglican priest. Mayes emigrated to the United States in 1958 and became an Episcopal worker-priest and director of a student house attached to Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and New York University. He then moved to the Diocese of California where he held a parish near San Francisco. While in San Francisco, Mayes founded San Francisco Suicide Prevention, later used as a model throughout the United States. Openly gay himself, Mayes organized a sexuality study center for the Episcopal Diocese of California. This ministry, originally known as the Parsonage, was awarded the Episcopal Jubilee citation and later evolved into the present-day Oasis organization. In 1992 he abandoned religion and became an atheist. In 2012, despite his atheism he was later honored by the San Francisco Night Ministry and both the California Assembly and Senate for his public service.

Invited in 1984 to join the English faculty of the University of Virginia, in 1991 he was appointed assistant dean in the College of Arts and Sciences, and then chair of the Communications department, finally founding the Program in Media Studies. He was awarded the Sullivan/Harrison award for mentoring and received a commendation by the University Seven Society. On retiring from the University in 1999 he published his autobiography Escaping God's Closet, which received the Lambda Literary Award for religion and spirituality, and in 2000 University of Virginia alumni named the Bernard D. Mayes Award after him. His papers are kept in the National Public Broadcasting Archives of the University of Maryland, the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, and in the Library of Congress.

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