 Mays states that his parents chose to live in Dayton, because at the time in the mid 1960s, Dayton had a strong industrial base and was one of the best places to live and to raise a family in America.His 1998 painting, “Death of an American Boom Town (Dayton Ohio)” demurs the economic decline of the industrial mid-west and in particular, the demise in quality of life in his former hometown of Dayton, Ohio.On graduating from Fairview High School in Dayton, Mays attended Wiley College in Marshall, Texas.