What: “Live Strive” Benefit & Auction
When: Saturday, May 16, 2015
Where: Rafters in Oxford, Mississippi
Time: 6 pm to midnight
Ole Miss graduate and Marine Justin Haynes passed away in January this year in an automobile accident just a few miles from his house on Highway 30 in Oxford. The Sigma Nu member is best known to the Ole Miss family for an iconic photo from Afghanistan holding an Ole Miss flag the Athletics Department had sent him.
A few months after he died, Justin’s fiancee Kaitlyn Crosby told Kathy Haynes (Justin’s mother) that she could either sit at home in her pajamas and cry or make something good come out of this.
They were to be married on May 16, 2015. Instead of a wedding, the Haynes family and Crosby will host Live Strive at Rafters to honor Justin. The benefit and memorial will feature a silent auction, cash bar, live music, and food. One hundred percent of the proceeds go to The Wounded Warrior Project.
“We are so overwhelmed by the support the Oxford community has shown us in making this memorial and benefit special,” Kathy said. “Rafters has bent over backwards to help us and we have so many silent auction items from local businesses and Ole Miss that we can’t even take anymore.”
The silent auction includes vacations, jewelry, Ole Miss sports memorabilia, and listless other items, Kathy said.
Justin proposed to Crosby on the balcony at Bouré on May 10th of last year. A year and week later, the community will come together to honor him.
Live music will feature The Gutter Daises and Charlie’s Bow Tie (Dallas). Admission is $20, which includes food. The silent auction is scheduled to be held from 6 to 8 pm, while the benefit will continue until midnight.
Haynes is survived by his parents, Kathy and Sandy Haynes of Oxford; his fiancee, Kaitlyn Rae Crosby of Oxford; a sister, Randall Haynes Mize and her husband, Lee, of Oxford; a brother, Austin Carter Haynes of Oxford; his grandmother, Mrs. Fletcher S. Haynes of Oxford, a niece, Bailey Katherine Mize of Oxford; and a family of brothers and sisters in the United States Marine Corps. 
