Garden man, longtime public servant David Thayer dies after cancer battle

David Alan Thayer, a Garden resident whose public work reached from Lansing to Iron River, died peacefully in his sleep at home on May 4 after a four-year battle with cancer. He was 73. Funeral service and burial have already taken place, closing a life that local families knew through city government, community groups and years of steady presence in the Upper Peninsula.

Born in Flint on Feb. 20, 1953, Thayer built his career on a mix of management and public administration. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Central Michigan University in 1975 and later completed a master’s degree in public administration from Northern Michigan University in 1998. Those credentials carried him into a series of public-service posts that reflected both state-level experience and local administration.

Thayer worked for the Michigan House of Representatives in Lansing for 11 years, spent four years with the Oakland County OLSHA in Pontiac, led American Red Cross Biomedical Services in Petoskey for four years and directed the County of Marquette OSA for four years. He also led the 2000 U.S. Census for the Upper Peninsula. In local government, he served as city manager in Lexington, Grayling and Iron River for five years each before retiring in 2020.

Iron County residents knew Thayer most directly through Iron River, where city records show he was still serving as city manager at a regular council meeting on Jan. 15, 2020. His tenure there drew public attention well beyond routine municipal business. In January 2017, the Iron River City Council rated him outstanding in a cumulative evaluation score of 413 out of 500, or 82.6 on average, after public calls for his removal over the Laura Frizzo controversy. A December 2016 report said a petition was circulating calling for his firing and noted that he had previously been forced to resign as Grayling city manager after allegations involving the release of 24 private citizens’ Social Security numbers.

Beyond the office, Thayer remained tied to the Hale-South Branch area and was a charter member of the Hale Eagles Aerie #4217. At least one obituary version identified his daughter as Abigail J’taime Thayer of Billings, Montana. He also is survived by three sisters, nieces, nephews and extended family, and he was preceded in death by his parents, Harold “John” Thayer and Delores “Geri” Thayer.

Thayer loved hunting and fishing, especially ice fishing, geese hunting and deer hunting, and he enjoyed walking in the woods. For Garden, Iron River and the broader western Upper Peninsula, his death marks the loss of a man whose work, family ties and years of service were rooted in the region he had long called home.