Our family thanks you for all of the support we’ve received since Thayer’s death in June.
Friends and family are invited to a Celebration of Life Service being held on September 10th at noon, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco and Biddeford. There will be a reception after the service in the Church’s parish hall. You can get directions to the church from the church’s site or Google.
Thayer A. McCain of Saco, Maine, died on June 10th . For sixty-two years he shared his gentle, compassionate love with so many people, and followed his curiosity and moral compass into purposeful endeavors.
Whether logging with his draft horses in the 1970s or helping elders maintain their independence in recent years, Thayer’s ingenuity surfaced often in his exploration of life. His years at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, with its Quaker philosophy, reinforced his desire to work toward a more just and peaceful world. His senior thesis, on the social biology of bees, reflected a lifelong love of the natural world. After graduation, his years as a homesteader reinforced his conservationist nature and connection to the land.
Thayer had hopes for many more years with his friends and family. Colon cancer took him early. His life ended at the Gosnell Memorial Hospice House in Scarborough, Maine, where on a recent sun-drenched day he sat in a bed outside as his grandchildren alternately romped around and snuggled with him.
He was born on October 12, 1948, in Kansas City, Missouri, the son of the Reverend Samuel N. McCain and Martha Addison McCain. For much of the 1950s, the family lived in Kauai, Hawaii. Thayer returned several times over the years to reconnect with Hawaiian friends and support efforts to rebuild the island’s traditions, culture and ecology.
After graduating from Haverford, Thayer settled in Deerfield, N.H., with his wife Terry Lochhead, and soon their son, Jesse, joined them. Thayer built a cabin, still standing today, using tenacity, recycled wood and Ken Kern’s The Owner-Built Home. Thayer and Terry lived off the land, with chickens, goats, garden vegetables and buckets of water hauled up from the well. Thayer learned to be a logger attuned to sustainable forest management. His skidder left no tire ruts in the woods, only hoof prints. Thayer and his beloved draft horse Bailey made a solid team.
“By patronizing supermarkets less, we cast our vote against excessive packaging and empty foods,” Thayer told a New Hampshire newspaper in 1972, several decades before that idea gained popular appeal. “By not earning much money, we pay minimum federal taxes, and so cast our vote against our country’s aggression in Southeast Asia. We’ve got a lot of strong feelings about the condition of the world today and we’re searching for alternatives … Living out here helps us to see some of these alternatives.”
The family moved to Canterbury, N.H., in 1979 where with friends and family he built a house with experimental passive-solar elements – and some have endured the test of time. He continued work in forest management and his first daughter, Jill, joined the family.
A few years later Thayer met, and later married, Nancy Brook and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ready for a career change, he enrolled at Tufts University and graduated from its Boston School of Occupational Therapy. He advocated for gay and lesbian visibility within the field of occupational therapy.
In 1999, Thayer founded Thriving At Home, an occupational therapy service for elders striving to maintain independence in their homes. He built a reputation for developing practical solutions reflecting Yankee ingenuity and resourcefulness, together with deep compassion for clients who came to realize they did not need to be ensnared by their age or disabilities.
Shortly after Martin Luther King Day three years ago, Thayer watched a public television program on the Tourmaline Hospice Singers in Vermont, and immediately wrote an email to his church choral director. Below the subject line, “I have a dream too,” Thayer planted the seeds for what is now the respected Harbour Singers Hospice Choir. The a capella singing group travels to nursing homes and hospices, bringing comfort to patients with their bedside sings. Thayer was a recipient of love through the voices of the Harbour Singers during his final days at the Gosnell House.
Thayer is survived by his wife, Nancy; two daughters, Jill Santiago and Jessie Levoy; one son, Jesse McCain; four grandchildren; brothers Mark and David McCain; and sisters Helen and Margot McCain, and Leslie Kaynor. He was a devoted member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco and Biddeford.
A private ceremony will be held in June, and in September a Celebration of Life Service will be held at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco and Biddeford. This site will be updated with details. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Saco and Biddeford, the Harbour Singers Hospice Choir, and the Gosnell Memorial Hospice House, Scarborough, Maine. A bench in Thayer’s memory will be placed in Horton’s Woods, off Buxton Road, Saco, as a place for quiet reflection.
