On Saturday, the late Dallas Cowboys wide receiver Bob Hayes was selected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I and dozens of other journalists sat in the room at the Super Bowl Media Center and listened to Lucille Hester, who was introduced as Hayes' sister, read a letter that she said Hayes gave her and wanted her to read in the event that he ever became a Hall of Famer.It was a touching moment. But some claim it was complete fiction.
In the days since Hayes' Hall of Fame selection, several people have come forward to say that Hester isn't really Hayes' sister. Hester insists that she is Hayes' sister, and others have come forward to say that Hayes introduced them to Hester and referred to her as "my sister." It's hard to know who to believe on that front.
But now the letter itself has been called into question. The Dallas Morning News quotes a typeface expert saying the letter (which I photographed on Saturday as Hester held it up) is printed in Calibri typeface, which Microsoft introduced in 2007. Hayes died in 2002 and the letter is dated October 29, 1999.
For her part, Hester says she doesn't know whether Hayes typed the letter himself or dictated it to someone else, and she doesn't know anything about analyzing fonts. But she insists that Hayes gave her the letter himself before he died.
So it's simple: Either the typeface expert and the people who say Hayes and Hester weren't siblings are flatly wrong, or Hester is flatly lying. I spoke to Hester after she read the letter, and she struck me as a warm and sincere woman. If she's a liar, she's as good at lying as Bob Hayes was at football.
