Bill Ayres, priest turned disc jockey who partnered with Harry Chapin to raise money for the hungry, dies at 85

Bill Ayres might have hung up his clerical collar several decades ago, but he never gave up his devotion to doing good works, his friends and family said.

He spent his life in service, first to God as a priest, then the hungry of Long Island and the world alongside musician and activist Harry Chapin, and finally the family he started with a former nun in 1979. He also served those who called into his radio shows, through which he interviewed musicians, including a young Bruce Springsteen, and used rock tunes as opportunities for reflection.

Ayres, of Huntington Station, died on Saturday while receiving “comfort care" at Carillon Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Greenlawn following a hospital stay, his family told Newsday. He was 85.

Even after he stepped away from the priesthood to marry and father children, his wife, Jeannine Ayres, said he “was always a priestly person."

“God was the center of his life, and doing God’s social justice work right out of the gospel," she said. “Having a family while he was doing that work is really what made him happy."

After seminary school, Ayres became a priest for the Diocese of Rockville Centre in 1966, first leading the parishioners of St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church in Babylon before serving at St. James Church in Seaford, his wife said.

In 1973, the rock-and-religion radio personality interviewed Chapin, a singer-songwriter then residing in Huntington Bay. On the air, they discussed “their shared outrage over the growing crises of hunger and poverty," according to a tribute by WhyHunger, the nonprofit the two men founded two years later as World Hunger Year.

The pair started an annual 24-hour “Hungerthon" radio fundraiser, which has since raised tens of millions of dollars, and successfully advocated for the first presidential hunger commission under President Jimmy Carter, according to the nonprofit.

Two years after Chapin’s 1981 death, Ayres stepped up and served as the nonprofit’s executive director for more than three decades. Beyond raising money for food, he sought a holistic approach to combat the source of hunger, said Jean Kelly, a decades-long friend of his and the executive director of the Interfaith Nutrition Network, a Hempstead-based nonprofit.

“He brought a focus to hunger and combined it with justice, connecting all organizations that could provide additional resources someone would need to get back on their feet," Kelly said. “They didn’t want to just hand somebody a sandwich, but rather make an impact so they don’t need to come back again."

In 1968, just two years into his time as a priest, the diocese asked him to host his first Sunday radio show. A few years later, he started his “On This Rock" program on WPLJ-FM, which broadcast one of the first radio interviews with The Boss. His longest running program, early Monday morning’s “The Bill Ayres Show," which ended in May 2019, fused rock programming with advice for live callers.

“Before I even met him, I heard him talking on the radio late at night, hearing how comforting he was to people calling in a pretty desperate state," Kelly recalled. “Over the radio, you could hear that he made an impact and calmed somebody down who was looking for help."

As the diocese’s director of radio and television in 1977, he helped launch Cablevision’s Channel L, which offered programming that ranged from puppet shows for children to a six-part series on death, Newsday reported at the time. Around this time, he began training a pair of nuns for their own radio show, including Jeannine Morin.

After one session, he invited her to a Michael Martin Murphey concert at Lincoln Center, followed by dinner. As they walked through Columbus Circle, Ayres guiding her by her elbow, the nun who would become his bride recalled saying to herself: “Oh my God, I think I’m in trouble."

“The next day, I was writing haikus about Father Bill as I was proctoring English exams," Jeannine Ayres recalled.

Over the next few years, the pair appeared on several radio and television programs together, discussing faith and social justice topics with guests. She learned he was as adept at discussing the works of Shakespeare as he was talking about Springsteen. In 1978, she was allowed to continue teaching while stepping away from her role as a nun. Ayres similarly ended his career as a priest after 13 years to marry her.

“We were matched intellectually, literarily, politically," Ayres said. “We both felt eventually this was a calling. When we married, Bill said to me, ‘Welcome to your life, Part 2, from God.’ ... We are always very grateful God brought us together, and we feel as though it was for specific reasons."

Born Jan. 14, 1941, Ayres inherited his “social justice" values from his family, his wife said. As a young man during the Civil Rights era, he joined the March on Washington, D.C., according to WhyHunger.

After a two-year stint at St. John’s University, he studied at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington "to serve God," inspired partly by “The Seven Storey Mountain," which follows author Thomas Merton’s conversion to Catholicism, Jeannine Ayres said.

As a father, he instilled in his daughters an appreciation for “quiet moments with people you love" and “love for the beauty of nature," Suzanne Ayres, his youngest, told Newsday.

“One of our last days we spent together, he was having a whistling conversation with a cardinal in the garden," she said.

He is survived by his wife and their two daughters, Suzanne, of Huntington, and Michelle Ayres, of Syosset, and a granddaughter, Jaida Blatt. A wake will be held 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday at A.L. Jacobsen Funeral Home in Huntington Station. A 9 a.m. gathering at the funeral home will be followed by a 10 a.m. Monday Mass at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs church in Centerport before his burial at Huntington Rural Cemetery.