Neil Alan Kayes, born January 22, 1946, died at his home in Haddam on June 20, 2025. He was the second child of Michael and Helen Kayes. Neil graduated in 1963 from Monroe HS in Rochester, New York, where he lettered in bowling. He graduated from the University of Rochester in 1967, where he majored in economics and continued to play the piano. Neil was predeceased by his sister Karen and by his beloved Pomeranians: Pecan, Pepper, Cashew, Cayenne, and Cocoa. He is survived by his cousin Jeannie Carliavati and her children.
Neil worked summers at Dupont Paint. Upon graduation from U of R, he briefly attended the University of Buffalo Law School. He worked as a substitute teacher in Buffalo city schools, then began a teaching program at SUNY-Buffalo, receiving a master’s in mathematics education in 1972.
Once, when Neil was playing the piano, he was tear-gassed during a Vietnam protest, only to get to his car and find that his tires had been slashed. In the second half of 1968, he worked at JFK High School in Cheektowaga, New York, as a math and science teacher. From 1968 to 1972, Neil taught middle school math in Eden, New York. From 1973 to 1975, he taught math and computer science at the American School in The Hague, the Netherlands. There, he was at the first high school in Europe to have a computer class for students, and he learned to speak Dutch. Back in the USA, Neil taught at Choate School in Wallingford from 1976 to 1978. Neil spent 1979 to 2006 teaching at RSD#17. At Haddam-Killingworth High School, Mr. Kayes taught math and computer science and coached tennis. Then he became the technology teacher at HKMS. In January of 1984, Mr. Kayes was featured in the Connecticut section of the New York Times, shown teaching computer classes to the teachers of the district. In 1995, Neil won a grant from Corvis of $50,000 for hardware and program software to build a state-of-the-art computer lab for the school.
Neil had his own telescope and read Astronomy magazine, Scientific American, and Macworld. For years, he went annually to the Macworld conference. Neil’s hobbies included golf, scuba diving, tennis, photography, bowling, piano, singing, and collecting the latest Apple technology.
