[nfb-talk] Terry Hayes Sales Dies:

[Kenneth Chrane]

Terry Hayes Sales, who recorded more than 900 books for blind, dies at 94, 

By Paula Burba.

 

Terry Hayes Sales, a singer and actress who had recorded more than 900 books 

for the American Printing House for the Blind, died on Monday at a nursing 

home in Rowley, Mass. She was 94.

Sales moved to Massachusetts from Louisville in August 2009 to be near her 

son, Michael Sales, who said she died of Alzheimer's disease. In December 

1988, Sales was inducted into the American Foundation for the Blind's 

Talking Book Hall of Fame, one of two living charter members cited for 

significant achievement in the narration of talking books. Sales had "this 

remarkable ability to tell a story," according to Steve Mullins, studio 

director for the American Printing House for the Blind, where Sales did her 

recordings. "She was very charming." With thousands of books recorded, all 

of them staying in circulation for many years, narrators developed 

followers, Mullins said.

"People, in some ways, grew up with her," he said.  Among her work are three 

narrations of "Little Women," as well as most

of the Nancy Drew books.

The recordings were produced for the National Library Service for the Blind 

and Physically Handicapped, a division of the Library of Congress, which 

honored Sales in 1998 for her dedicated service of more than 60 years as a 

narrator.

Sales likely was the narrator longest affiliated with the American Printing 

House for the Blind, Mullins said. She began narrating in 1938,

just one year after the printing house released its first talking book, 

"Gulliver's Travels." In 2006, though she was no longer a regularly

scheduled narrator at the printing house, Sales participated in the 75th 

anniversary celebration and marathon recording session of that book with 44 

other narrators.

Mullins said he was almost certain Sales was the only person to have made 

the transition from the earliest recordings made on wax through the era of 

tape and into the current digital age, recording on all mediums.

Sales was a high school sophomore when she landed her first professional gig 

as a staff singer on WBBM radio in her hometown of Chicago. She met 

Louisville native Stuart Sales while he was a student at the University of 

Illinois, their son said, and they married in Chicago when she was 19.

While her husband later served in the Navy, she did a talk show on WGN in 

Chicago as well as commercials and serial acting before the couple returned 

to Louisville.

 

 

In Louisville, she continued to sing on radio for both WAVE and WHAS. 

According to her son, she inherited the show Dale Evans did at WHAS after 

Evans left.

She also appeared in some ensemble television casts, and was involved in 

numerous local theater projects.

When she heard about the talking books at the American Printing House for 

the Blind, her son said she considered it an acting opportunity.

Sales also funded the launch of Audio Description at The Kentucky Center for 

the Performing Arts in 1991 in memory of her husband, who died in 1987. The 

program provides narrators who broadcast live descriptions of the action 

onstage to audience members during performances.

She also was the voice on the center's 10th anniversary "Tour on Tape," and 

co-wrote that script.

A graveside service is planned for 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday at The Temple 

cemetery.

A memorial service will be held sometime next year, her son said.

Herman Meyer & Son funeral home is handling arrangements.

Reporter Paula Burba can be reached at (502) 582-4800.