By the Daily Post staff
Walt Hays, a pillar in Palo Alto who pushed the city to make sustainability a priority, has died. He was 87.
Hays was a civil trial lawyer, a mediator, an active community volunteer and a local leader in the environmental movement.
“I don’t know anybody who lived his ethics more than Walt did,” former Mayor Le Levy said at the Palo Alto Rotary meeting today (Jan. 30).
Hays graduated from Stanford Law School in 1961 and was a civil trial lawyer for 32 years. After retiring, he volunteered with a long list of nonprofits including Acterra, Carbon-Free Palo Alto and the Waddell Creek Association, which operates a nature center in Big Basin Redwoods State Park.
Hays married his wife, Kay Hays, in 1957, according to a lifetime achievement award he received from the nonprofit Avenidas in 2008. They lived together at The Sequoias, a rest home in Portola Valley, in his final years.
A full obituary for Hays will be printed in the Wednesday edition of the Post.