BRUNSWICK – Peter A. Garland, a lifelong public servant and one-term congressman, has died. He was 81.

Garland, who died Wednesday at Mid Coast Hospital, served as the mayor of Saco in the 1950s before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in Maine’s 1st District as a Republican in 1960.

After serving one term in Congress, he returned home to Maine to work in the family business, Garland Manufacturing.

His daughter, Nancy Garland, said her father was a dedicated public servant who always tried to listen and put others first, even at his own expense.

“He always felt it was important to stand up for what you believe in,” she said. “Even if you were standing alone.”

Garland was born in Boston in 1923 and graduated from Thornton Academy in Saco before going on to the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., and Bowdoin College. During World War II, he served in the Army Air Corps.

From the late 1960s until the 1980s, he was the town manager in several communities. After working in Gorham for two years, he became city manager in Claremont, N.H., and then went on to Searsport and Bath, where he was the manager for eight years until he retired in 1989.