The New York Times - and its international edition - carried Bernard Mayes' obituary four months ago.

"Bernard Mayes, 85, Dies; Started First U.S. Suicide Hotline

"By WILLIAM YARDLEY, NOV. 1, 2014

"Bernard Mayes, a multifaceted Anglican priest who started the first suicide hotline in the United States and a decade later became the founding chairman of National Public Radio, died on Oct. 23 in San Francisco. He was 85.

"Matthew A. Chayt, a close friend, confirmed the death, saying Mr. Mayes had had Parkinson’s disease.

"Of all his varied endeavors — he was a journalist, a professor and a gay rights activist among other things — Mr. Mayes was most proud of San Francisco Suicide Prevention, the hotline he set up in 1961 with a single red telephone in the city’s gritty Tenderloin District.

"He was already juggling careers at the time — as a priest in Marin County and as a correspondent for the British Broadcasting Corporation — when his alarm at learning of San Francisco’s high suicide rate prompted him to action.

"“Thinking of ending it all? Call Bruce, PR1-0450, San Francisco Suicide Prevention.”

"That was one of his first advertisements, posted on city buses. Bruce was a pseudonym. The phone rang once the first night. Half a century later, it rings nearly 200 times a day, and about 100 volunteers and 10 paid staff members are there to help.

"Today, Suicide Prevention cites statistics showing that the city’s suicide rate is less than half what it was when the agency was founded. Hundreds of similar hotlines have since been set up in cities across the nation, and there is now a federally financed hotline, 1-800-273-8255, which receives tens of thousands of calls a month.

"Mr. Mayes had no training in suicide counseling.

"“I did feel that what was really needed was a compassionate ear, someone to talk to,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2012. “It occurred to me that we had to have some kind of service which would offer unconditional listening, and that I would be this anonymous ear.”

"While leading the prevention center, from 1961 to 1969, he continued to report for the BBC, filing feature stories from the West Coast. He also worked for local radio broadcasters, including KXKX, which was owned by the Presbyterian Church and later was bought by KQED, a public television station in San Francisco.

"Mr. Mayes became the first general manager of KQED-FM, and in that role he was named a board member of National Public Radio, formed in 1970 by Congress and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. He became its first chairman, and his signature is one of four on its articles of incorporation.

"In “Listener Supported: The Culture and History of Public Radio,” the author, Jack W. Mitchell, himself a former board chairman of what is now called NPR, wrote that Mr. Mayes and other early board members had tried to “solve the old conflict between ‘giving the public what it wants’ (commercial broadcasting) and ‘giving the public what it needs’ (public service broadcasting) by ‘giving the public the microphone.’ ”

"Anthony Bernard Duncan Mayes was born on Oct. 10, 1929, in London. His father was a watercolor painter who worked for British railroad publications; his mother was a telephone operator.
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"After graduating from Cambridge University with degrees in ancient languages and history, he taught high school Latin, Greek and history.

"In his autobiography, “Escaping God’s Closet: The Revelations of a Queer Priest,” published in 2001, Mr. Mayes said he was drawn to the priesthood through his attraction to another churchgoer, who was not gay and who at one time intended to become a priest. In the late 1950s, the church sent him to the United States, where, as an Episcopal priest, he worked with students at New York University before making his way to San Francisco.

"He left the board of National Public Radio in 1972 but remained involved with public radio as a consultant to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting throughout the ’70s. He lectured at Stanford’s Institute for the Mass Media into the 1980s.

"He joined the faculty of the University of Virginia in 1984 and spent two decades there, becoming assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 1991 to 1999. He helped start the Serpentine Society, an alumni association for gay, transgender and bisexual students.

"He has no immediate survivors. He was cared for late in life by Mr. Chayt, who was one of his students at Virginia, and Mr. Chayt’s husband, Will Scott.

"As he grew older, Mr. Mayes abandoned his Christian faith and promoted a philosophy that he said was rooted in “scientific materialism.” He called it Soupism.

"“There are no gods, no magic, no final judgment and no grand plan,” he wrote on his website devoted to Soupism. “Everything from planets to humans is composed of tiny particles, energy, and nothing else. All the particles are always moving and endlessly interacting with each other as in a soup.”

"He discussed the philosophy in his autobiography as well, finding a kind of transcendence in the material world.

"“We are,” he wrote, “already close to, surrounded by, enveloped, as it were, in immortality: sheets formed from the cotton of the fields or the wool of the sheep; plastics boiled from minerals dug from the earth or the oil of ancient vegetation; concrete and metal poured from the rocks of the planet; all moving within the endless interchange from which our bodies are derived and from which others are already being born. Never does the process cease; never does it fail us.”"

"Correction: November 9, 2014:

"An obituary last Sunday about Bernard Mayes, a former Anglican priest who started the first suicide hotline in the United States and was later the founding chairman of National Public Radio, paraphrased incorrectly a passage in his autobiography, “Escaping God’s Closet: The Revelations of a Queer Priest.” Mr. Mayes, who was gay, wrote that he was drawn to the priesthood through his attraction to another churchgoer, who was not gay and who at one time intended to become a priest. He did not say he entered the priesthood “after being seduced by a member of the clergy.” The obituary also gave an outdated telephone number for the federally financed national suicide hotline. It is 1-800-273-8255, no longer 1-800-SUICIDE."