Douglas Heal Thayer

Douglas Heal Thayer, 88, died at home in Provo, Utah, during his favorite season of the year, his third battle with cancer finally taking the ultimate toll on October 17, 2017. Born April 19, 1929 to Lily Nora Thatcher and Edward “Frank” Thayer, Doug was the consummate Provo boy. He grew up hiking the mountains overlooking his town, roaming the fields, fishing the streams, swimming in the river and the polluted lake that immunized generations of adventurous youth. A noted short story writer and novelist – called “the Mormon Hemingway” and “the grandfather of modern Mormon fiction” – Doug’s memoir, Hooligan: A Mormon Boyhood, captured the life of a boy growing up in Provo during the Great Depression. In recognition of Doug’s ties to the community, Mayor Lewis Billings proclaimed Doug’s 75th birthday “Douglas Thayer Day” in Provo.

When he was 17, Doug dropped out of BY High School to join the Army, serving with the US Occupation Forces in war-shattered Germany, an experience that changed his life and greatly influenced his writing. He returned to Germany for 30 months as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Back in Provo he took a bachelor’s degree in English at Brigham Young University (BYU), then did graduate work at Stanford (MA American Lit), University of Maryland (PhD study), and the University of Iowa (MFA Fiction Writing). He taught at BYU for 54 years, serving as Coordinator of Composition, Director of Creative Writing, and Associate Chair in the English Department, and Associate Dean of the College of Humanities with Dean Todd Britsch.

All his life, Doug worked hard without complaint. As a boy, he scrubbed and cleaned the old Sixth Ward Meetinghouse and the Clark Clinic with his mother, the indomitable Lil. He found jobs – collecting nightcrawlers in the dark from neighbors’ lawns to sell to waiting fishermen, sweeping floors and washing dishes in cafes, delivering papers. As a young man he worked at the office of the Provo Herald, and as a helper on a uranium drill rig, a construction laborer, a railroad section hand, and a seasonal ranger in Yellowstone National Park.

Doug was an avid Scouter, from Senior Patrol Leader and Eagle Scout under the mentorship of Harold B. Jones, to decades guiding others (including four sons) towards their Eagles. He served on Scout committees into his eighties. As a young man he hunted and fished with his sidekicks Dean Conant and the Jones clan. By the time he was 60 he had sons of his own to taking fishing, on the lakes and reservoirs, water and ice. In his mellowing years he perfected fly fishing — the cast and the art of catch-and-release — with friend and colleague (and literary critic) Eugene England, who passed away in 2001. He kept fishing with Dean, Scouts, sons, grandsons, and his new ace buddy Randy Rogers, almost to the end.

Doug married Donlu DeWitt in the Salt Lake City LDS Temple in 1974. Long accustomed to walking to and from BYU every day, he kept up the practice, a 25-minute journey from their first home on First South, and the same distance from the home he and Donlu built in Edgemont in 1978, where their six children grew up. Doug’s habits were regular and sound. His students, colleagues, friends, ward members, and neighbors knew his relentless wit and dry humor, his trustworthiness, and his selfless, unheralded service.

Doug told stories, tall tales to entertain his grandchildren and mystified strangers, and carefully crafted works of fiction. He published four collections of short stories and four novels (a fifth still in process as he died). Recognition of Doug’s work includes prizes from Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought for the short story and essay, the P. A. Christensen Award, the Association for Mormon Letters Prize in the Novel, the Karl G. Maeser Creative Arts Award, the Utah Institute of Fine Arts Award in the Short Story, and the 2008 Smith-Pettit Foundation Award for Outstanding Contribution to Mormon Letters.

A lifelong and faithful member of the LDS Church, Doug was counselor to his mission president Edwin Cannon (upon the order of visiting Apostle David O. McKay), and held the office of seventy after his mission and until local units of seventy were discontinued in 1974, when he was ordained a high priest by Harold B. Jones, who was ordained by Matthew Cowley, ordained by George Albert Smith, ordained by Joseph F. Smith, ordained by Brigham Young. Doug served on lesson-writing committees for the Church, in three bishoprics, and on two high councils. Besides those countless Scouting committees, he served in many teaching callings, and in his seventies he volunteered to be the Ward Representative supervising the meetinghouse cleaning crews, a calling he could never completely relinquish, sneaking over to make sure the stake pavilion was in order (aided in the end by his daughter Katie and her husband, Jonathan) until two weeks before his death.

Doug was preceded in death by his parents, his brother Rowland, his sister Marlene, his nephew Keith Hill, and his stepfather, Glen Overly. He is survived by his wife, their six children and their spouses and their 21 “offspring”, whom he adored: Emmelyn (Steven) Freitas and Vivienne; Paul (Sharolyn Shields) and Marcus, Aaron, Heather, Justin, Spencer & Alice; James (Elizabeth Benson) and Benson, William, Anna, Simon, Madeline & Sara; Katherine (Jonathan) Willson and Jacob & Lilian; Stephen (Amy Finnell) and Maxwell, Miles & Alexander; and Michael (Jill Myers) and Abigail, Owen & Sienna. He is also survived by his brother Robert (Brigitte) Thayer and daughters Robin (Eric) Adams, Kirsten (Heiko) Marschall, and Kendra Thayer, by Rowland’s children David (Kathy), Lillian, and Douglas (Paula) Thayer, and Kathleen (Tommy) Koch, and by Marlene’s children Kenneth (Erika), Steven (Nancy), and Richard Hill, and Valerie Cantu.

The family thank friends Dean, Randy, Bruce Jorgensen, Bill Lund, and Gene Mead, who kept him talking, reading, revising, taking drives, and making trips to the library and to lunch, up to the last, and Tammy Poulson, his hospice nurse, charged with watching for signs of decline as she delightfully endured that outrageous and charming wit.

Funeral services will be held Saturday, Oct. 28, at 1 p.m. at the Edgemont South Stake Center, 2950 North Canyon Rd., Provo (wouldn’t you know it, during a BYU game). The family will greet visitors that day from 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. at the church, and on Friday, Oct. 27, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Berg Mortuary, 185 E. Center St., Provo. Interment will be at the Provo Cemetery. Condolences may be expressed at www.bergmortuary.com.