Colonel William James Haynes (USAF, Ret.)

Colonel William James Haynes (USAF, Retired) died on Saturday, December 20, 2025, holding hands with his sweet Caroline, his love for more than seventy years. Family, friends, neighbors, and colleagues knew him as “Jimmy” as a child, as “Haynie” as a teen and adult, and as “Grumps” in later decades.

Jimmy, youngest child of Joseph Rion Haynes and Eva Constance Mack, was born in Winnsboro, South Carolina on June 29, 1935. Jimmy’s father, Joe, a World War I volunteer in a US Army evacuation ambulance company, was recognized for his valor in combat in France. Joe and Eva married upon his return. Sixteen years after returning from the war, Joe died—four days shy of Jimmy’s sixth birthday. A few months later, duty called away Jimmy’s sister and two brothers to serve in World War II.

Penniless and fatherless, Jimmy thrived in wartime era Winnsboro thanks to his devoted mother, his twelve aunts and uncles (all but one with spouses), his father’s surviving fellow veterans, and the Sion Presbyterian church led by the Reverend Arthur Martin.

A popular wit and writer in school, Jimmy worked many jobs from an early age. His first job was selling boiled peanuts, at age seven. Many others followed, including shoveling coal and delivering newspapers, mowing yards, laboring in the ice house, and working overnight shifts at the textile mill.

Starting college with a loan from the Rotary club, Jimmy (by then known as “Haynie”) studied economics at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, while participating in R.O.T.C. and working nights at the highway department.

As a college junior, Haynie met Caroline Heyward Bynum near the Carolina Horseshoe during her first days on campus. He never let her go.

Days before graduating and being commissioned as a U.S. Air Force second lieutenant in 1957, Haynie married Caroline, and he began his 26-year active duty Air Force career as a navigator in KC-97s and KC-135s with the Strategic Air Command. Three times deployed in long term combat assignments in Southeast Asia, Haynie flew hundreds of combat missions. He earned multiple Meritorious Service Medals, Air Medals, Air Force Commendation medals, Outstanding Unit Awards for Valor, and other awards associated with his service in the Cold War and the Vietnam Campaign. Excelling in his Air Force career with assignments of increasing responsibility, Haynie was promoted rapidly and meanwhile earned an MBA. Haynie capped his Air Force career in a command assignment at McGhee-Tyson Air Force Base, and then led the AFROTC unit at the University of Tennessee as Professor of Air Science. A seasoned Colonel in 1982, Grumps declined an assignment to the Pentagon to retire from the Air Force and to settle in Maryville, Tennessee.

Retirement meant full-time successive leadership roles in many banks in East Tennessee. It meant managing a medical practice, and serving as a church deacon. And it meant serving as coach, manager, driver, and number one fan and cheerleader for Caroline’s wildly successful career playing and teaching tennis. Together they traveled the country and the world as Caroline’s tennis blossomed. Over many decades, the two of them taught tennis to countless children in Blount County, through the Maryville Parks and Recreation Department.

Haynie and Caroline raised and educated three children: Jim, Patricia, and Jeff. Haynie and Caroline became “Grumps” and “Mumps” when they started “Camp Grumpy” for their grandchildren, thereby nurturing the next generation while giving the parents time off. The model of Camp Grumpy spread to many families and enriched the lives of children in multiple generations.

For nearly fifty years, Grumps and Mumps have made Maryville home. Grumps was a runner, tennis player, and a hiker in the Smokies, in Scotland, and in Wales. Hosting book clubs, doubles tennis, and theme dinners (such as the M.A.S.H. finale) contributed to making their home a place of celebration and refuge for friends and family. In recent years, Grumps and Mumps hosted the Friday Night Café for friends who, over time, had lost their spouses. Grumps loved his many dogs, from Amber in 1971 to Scarlett today. All of them loved him unconditionally.

During the last several years, Grumps battled the ravages of Parkinson’s heroically and without complaint. Grumps’s caregivers were dear to him, particularly Breanna Simerly and Boston McGown. He appreciated his doctors, Dr. Britton Bishop and Dr. Cynthia Pearman, and his hospice nurses, especially Chandra Garland. Increasingly homebound, Grumps kept up his love of learning, family, friends, Country, and New Providence Presbyterian Church through visits, reading, calls, and videos. He remained sharp and playful, and especially enjoyed hugs from great-grandchildren, reveling with some of them most recently at Thanksgiving. In his last days, he delighted in whispering to loved ones “Happy Trails,” from the Roy Rogers song. Humble, shy, witty, an accomplished man of integrity and grace, Colonel Haynes was a role model and led by example to his end in this world and into the next.

Colonel Haynes – Grumps – is survived by Caroline, his wife of more than 68 years, his three children (The Honorable William J Haynes II, Patricia Caroline Hollifield, and SMSgt Jeffrey Thomas Haynes (USAF, Ret.)), his ten grandchildren, his eleven great-grandchildren, and unnumbered other “children” that he taught and inspired. Happy Trails.

A service celebrating Colonel Haynes’s life will be held at the New Providence Presbyterian Church in Maryville on Saturday, January 17, 2026, at 11 a.m. All are welcome.

In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests that memorial donations be made in Colonel Haynes’s name to any of the following organizations below: 

New Providence Presbyterian Church, Maryville, TN

Sion Presbyterian Church, Winnsboro, SC

Appalachian Bear Rescue, Townsend, TN