Lexington owes its library system to a man who took on city hall. He died last week.

Joe Hayse was angry. It was 1979, and he’d been trying to do some research at the Lexington Public Library, which at the time had its main branch near Gratz Park, in the building that is now the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning.

But instead of being able to access the materials he needed on the second floor, the former University of Kentucky Honors Program professor was told it was too dangerous. The upper level had been closed because of concerns that the beams in the floor couldn’t support the weight of patrons and might collapse. The building was suffering from a leaking roof, bad wiring, peeling paint and a cramped interior, a later Herald-Leader article stated.

So Hayse marched himself over to the office of his childhood friend, local attorney William C. Jacobs, and set in motion a lawsuit that resulted in nearly doubling the funding the library system received from the city.

That influx of money spurred the construction of what is now the main branch of the Lexington Public Library on Main Street and allowed the library to open other new branches too.

Hayse, 87, died Tuesday, according to an obituary.

“With all the taxes we pay, it sure looks like the city ought to put more money into the library,” Hayse told his lawyer friend Jacobs that day in 1979, as he later recounted to a Herald-Leader reporter.

Jacobs did some digging and found that, under state law, the city should have been giving the library 5 cents for every $100 of property valuation, but instead, under an agreement with the library board, the city had for years been giving the library about half that.

The class-action lawsuit, filed without the help of the library board, forced the city not only to begin providing the library system the correct amount but also to make some back payments.

“The city fought it ... and lost every time,” said Larry Smith, who spent about 20 years on the Board of Trustees of the Lexington Public Library and now serves on its foundation’s board of directors.

He said the Lexington library system would not look like it does today if it had not been for Hayse taking action.

Then-Mayor Scotty Baesler, who had opposed the lawsuit because of its impact on the city budget, even gave kudos to Hayse when the new Central Library opened on Main Street in 1989, saying “without that lawsuit, you don’t have this library. I give Mr. Hayse a lot of credit for helping us along with the funding.”

Baesler said after the state appeals court ruled against the city, he decided to stop fuming and set up a long-range plan for library improvements.

Since that time, Smith said, “we’ve replaced every branch and built a few new ones.”

“He was just a patron of the library and saw a problem and figured out a way to address it and right a wrong,” Smith said. “We now have one of the better libraries for cities our size in the country.”

Hayse, a graduate of DuPont Manual High School in Louisville, was an Army veteran. He met and married his wife of 64 years, Heidi Mueller Hayse, while serving in the Army as a translator in Europe, according to his obituary.

He held a PhD in comparative literature.

Hayse moved to Lexington in 1971 to teach in the UK Honors Program, a position he left after being denied tenure, which resulted in a decades-long lawsuit against the university.

He went on to a long career with the Kentucky Department of Transportation, where he led the mapping division, his son Mike Hayse said Saturday.

Mike Hayse said his dad was “a civic-minded guy.”

“He really believed in the library and the importance of education,” he said.

Ten years after Hayse filed his suit against the city, he walked into the newly-opened Central Library on Main Street and asked for a library card.

He said at the time that he felt good about giving the city the push it needed to make a positive change, and he didn’t care anything about having his name on a plaque inside the building or anything of that sort.

He said in another Herald-Leader story in 1986 that he was just “an everyday ordinary citizen” who got “a wild hair.”

“It’s nice to win one against city hall every once in a while,” he said.

Though he never met Hayse, Smith will speak at his funeral Tuesday.

“I hope I don’t get too emotional,” he said. “It’s a good story to tell.”

In addition to his wife, Hayse is survived by their four children, John, Mike, Paul and Patricia.

Funeral services will be conducted at 11 a.m. Tuesday at St. Raphael’s Episcopal Church at 1891 Parkers Mill Road. Visitation will be 5 to 7 p.m. Monday at Milward Funeral Directors’ Southland Drive location.