William Hanes Ayres (February 5, 1916 – December 27, 2000) was an American World War II veteran and politician who served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio from 1951 to 1971.

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William H. Ayres was born in Eagle Rock, Virginia. He moved with his parents to West Virginia and later to Lorain County, Ohio. He attended the Weller Township High School, and graduated from Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1936. He worked as a salesman for heating equipment in Akron, Ohio, from 1936 to 1944.

He was president of the Ayres Heating & Insulation Co., Akron, Ohio, since 1946.

Ayres was elected as a Republican to the Eighty-second and to the nine succeeding Congresses. Ayres was well regarded by House members of both parties. He usually did not list his party affiliation on his campaign literature instead listing himself as "Your Congressman."^{[citation needed]}

He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1970 to the Ninety-second Congress defeated by John Seiberling, an Akron Democrat and scion.

He died of heart and kidney ailments on December 27, 2000, in Columbia, Maryland. Interment at Arlington National Cemetery.

Representative Ayres's wife of 61 years, Mary Helen Coventry Ayres, died in 1999.

He had two daughters, Virginia Mount Ayres of Alexandria, Virginia, and Judith Elizabeth Ayres Burke of Middleburg, Virginia. A son, Frank Hanes Ayres, died in 1991.