Dr. Oliver Wesley Hayes III
Class of 1969
Career Pathway: Health Sciences
At GHS, Wesley Hayes was a member of the National Honor Society, the boys basketball, football and ski teams and the play crews.
At Central Michigan University, he earned a bachelor of science degree in 1973. He earned a master of science degree, with honors, at Michigan State University in 1975 and a D.O. degree from MSU in 1981. He was a resident in the MSU emergency medicine program from 1981 to 1985, where he became a board-certified emergency medicine physician. He then attended the University of Michigan School of Public Health, where he earned a master's degree in health policy, with honors, in 1991.
Dr. Hayes is currently the chair of the Department of Internal Medicine in the College of Osteopathic Medicine at Michigan State University. He is also the director of quality control at Ingham Regional Hospital.
Dr. Hayes said he had a life-changing experience when he became the project director for the Community-University Health Partnership. In that role, he traveled to Third World countries -- including Africa, Bulgaria, Mexico and the Philippines -- working on partnerships between universities and communities to improve health care in those countries. Dr. Hayes was in charge of a Bulgarian project in emergency medicine, working with its government after the fall of communism to install pre-hospital care systems.
Dr. Hayes married Debbie Nethers, a 1970 GHS graduate, in 1975. They have two children, Emily (23) and Zachary (19). His father, Oliver "Wes" Hayes, worked for 30 years as a rural mail carrier for Grayling, and his mother, Caroline Patricia (McKenna) Hayes, is a 1940 GHS graduate. Dr. Hayes is trying to become a "respectable golfer" and enjoys traveling, reading and history.
