Brian Thayer, former BDN reporter, dies at 57

Brian C. Thayer, a former Bangor Daily News reporter and newspaper manager for mid-Maine newspapers and current president of Lavalley Lumber in Sanford, died April 9 in Falmouth. He was 57.

The Kennebec Journal reported Thayer died of an apparent heart attack while playing basketball with friends.

A generation of Bangor Daily News readers will remember Thayer as the often daring reporter whose accounts of rock climbing, sky diving and winter camping with U.S. Special Forces lent an air of adventure to the BDN’s news pages in the early 1970s.

Equipped with his ample self-confidence, determination and a relentlessly competitive spirit, Thayer would find a genuine expert to assist in meeting his challenge du jour, and once properly outfitted and coached, would begin his assault.

In May 1972, British rock climbing expert Paul Ross was his companion in scaling 450-foot Cathedral Ledge in North Conway, N.H. While executing one tricky maneuver, the determined Thayer’s coach admonished him not to use phrases like, “I’m going to make it up here if it’s the last …”

“That’s not the best thing to say when you’re rock climbing,” Ross advised.

Earlier that year, Thayer spent three frigid days in White Mountains National Forest training with the Green Berets of Delta Company, 10th Special Forces of Fort Devens, Mass. He fought beside them against blisters and frostbite, shivering at night in his mummy bag, and emerged from the experience convinced: “There is no chance of me running down to the nearest recruiting office to enlist, but I’ve gained much practical insight into the art of winter survival.”

When the weather warmed, he did head to Dexter, and a June flight with Dave Dunbar, jumpmaster for the University of Maine Parachute Club. Leaping into 35-degree air at 2,800 feet into what he described as “deafening silence,” Thayer eventually spotted his target, an old canopy spread on the ground that “looked about the size of a postage stamp.” He touched down safely, but rolled right, absorbing the shock on his left forearm. Later, his left wrist in a cast, Thayer wrote he might call Dunbar in a couple of months “to see what else I can break,” but pledged when the 1972 World Skydiving Championships were held that year in California, “I won’t be there.”

Retired BDN associate managing editor Kent Ward of Winterport was state editor when Thayer came to work at the paper in 1971. “My lasting memory of Brian will be as the ambitious young state desk reporter confident of his ability – and rightfully so – to take on any assignment I could throw at him,” Ward said. “If the story called for jumping out of an airplane, say, or tagging along with a Mount Katahdin rescue party to retrieve an injured hiker, Brian was the easy choice.” Ward said Thayer’s “subsequent success in a full newspaper career came as no surprise to those who worked with him at this newspaper. The man was a winner: his passing a sad occasion.”

Joyce Hedlund, president of Eastern Maine Community College, remembers Thayer, a former vice chair and trustee of the Maine Community College System, as a “strong supporter of the community colleges. He wanted us to be excellent in all that we did and his encouragement, honesty, enthusiasm and support will be missed by all of us.” A memorial service will be conducted 11 a.m. Thursday at Curtis Lake Christian Church in Sanford.