{"id":2020,"date":"2017-10-19T06:29:39","date_gmt":"2017-10-19T13:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/welcometable\/?p=2020"},"modified":"2017-10-25T09:13:55","modified_gmt":"2017-10-25T16:13:55","slug":"tribute-douglas-heal-thayer-april-19-1929-october-17-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/welcometable\/2017\/10\/tribute-douglas-heal-thayer-april-19-1929-october-17-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"In Tribute: Douglas Heal Thayer (April 19, 1929-October 17, 2017)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"doug<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cMargaret, are you gr\u00edeving <\/em><\/p>\n

Over Golden grove unleaving?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This is how Douglas Thayer often greeted me when we met in the hallway of the Jesse Knight Building, where both of us taught for years.\u00a0 I wonder if I was the only person who got such a greeting from his rich supply of poems.\u00a0 I was still in my twenties, newly married to Bruce Young, when he first greeted me this way\u2014in 1985. I had taken advanced creative writing from him in 1978, but I\u2019m not sure he remembered that.<\/p>\n

I certainly remember it, though.\u00a0 I was deeply intimidated by him.\u00a0 I had already started my third-world adventures, and had taken only two books with me to Guatemala the previous summer: Moby Dick<\/em> and Under the Cottonwoods<\/em>\u2014Doug\u2019s first short story collection, his personal response to President Kimball\u2019s plea for LDS art and literature which could rival the great works of the world. I had recognized Dr. Thayer\u2019s talent, and found \u201cThe Clinic\u201d in that collection to be one of the finest pieces I had read anywhere. It\u2019s the story of a returned missionary\/Viet Nam war veteran who has gone from hope in the gospel to horrors in the jungle, and visits \u201cthe clinic\u201d as part of his recovery.\u00a0 The other stories in the collection were excellent as well, but \u201cThe Clinic\u201d (which he would eventually expand into a novel titled The Tree House<\/em>) moved me the way only great literature can.\u00a0 Surely this man had one of the finest minds and most expansive hearts in the literary world.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I would find out later that I was right in my assumptions about his mind and his heart, but the man I encountered in English 518 was sardonic, witty, and sometimes painfully direct. He would not tolerate the term \u201cmaking love\u201d, for example, if the characters doing it were not married.\u00a0 No, if they weren\u2019t married, sex was fornication.<\/p>\n

His gifts of charity were cloaked in his ironic responses to people and words. He was funny and he was normal. I would not have guessed just by seeing him that he had the depth of intellect and heart to write \u201cThe Clinic.\u201d Indeed, his \u201ccommon man\u201d bearing was part of his charm.<\/p>\n

I remember him asking us students, \u201cDoes anyone have a copy of \u2018La Belle Dame Sans Merci\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

I immediately opened my purse and started looking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m checking to see if I have that poem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Douglas Thayer then gave me THE look.\u00a0 The Look that only those of us lucky enough to have received it can picture. It cannot happen on any face but Doug\u2019s. The look lasts a full three seconds.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re all English majors,\u201d he said as The Look ended. \u201cI thought one of you might have an anthology with the poem in it.\u201d\u00a0 His lips fought an amused smile.\u00a0 He muttered something and shook his head. \u201cLooking in your purse!\u201d<\/p>\n

Doug was my supervisor when I started teaching Freshman English in 1985, and he was aware that I was dating my former professor.\u00a0 Bruce Young and I announced our engagement just before the English Department awards banquet in March 1985.\u00a0 I had won an award for a short story, so it was a big night\u2014and the English professors were thrilled that Bruce, age thirty-four, was going to marry.<\/p>\n

After the banquet, Doug congratulated me.\u00a0 I assumed that his kind words referred to my engagement. \u201cYou already knew, right?\u201d I said. \u201cWell, of course I knew,\u201d Doug answered (emphasizing KNEW in his inimitable way).\u00a0 \u201cI made the list!\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it was my turn to give Doug a significant look\u2014but mine was confused.\u00a0 \u201cThe list?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOh!\u201d he said. \u201cOh! You\u2019re referring to something else, not your award!\u00a0 Are there wedding bells?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"doug<\/a>Of course, the idea of an \u201colder\u201d professor in BYU\u2019s English Department getting married was quintessentially Doug\u2019s and Donlu\u2019s. Theirs was the romance of the English Department century. She was twenty-six and he was forty-five when they married in 1974\u2014after a four-year courtship, and long past the time when anyone thought that Professor Thayer would marry.<\/p>\n

As Doug transitioned from being \u201cDr. Thayer\u201d to Doug in my world, I found him wry and joyful, easily cajoled into wonderful, full-bodied laughter.<\/p>\n

When I next saw him in the hall, after my marriage, he greeted me with Gerard Manley Hopkins\u2019 lines for the first time: \u201c\u2019Margaret are you grieving?\u2019\u00a0 Do you know that poem, Margaret?\u201d<\/p>\n

I said that I did know it, but not well.\u00a0 His quoting it so often to me made me want to read it more deeply.<\/p>\n

In 1989, Doug\u2019s short story collection, Mr. Wahlquist in Yellowstone<\/em>, was published.\u00a0 I eagerly recommended it to my students, particularly the story \u201cThe Red-Tailed Hawk,\u201d which Gene England had called \u201cthe perfect story\u201d. (Only six years ago, Doug published yet another acclaimed collection, Wasatch: Mormon Stories and a Novella.)<\/em><\/p>\n

And so Doug Thayer and I\u00a0 became colleagues, and I remained his fan.\u00a0 He knew it, and thanked me periodically for recommending his work to my classes. When he published his memoir about growing up in Provo, Hooligan: A Mormon Boyhood<\/em>, I recommended it to my family as well as to my students.\u00a0 I believe that my aunt Helen Dahlquist bought fifty copies.\u00a0 It was so familiar and true to her, as she had also been raised in Provo.\u00a0 And it was hilarious!<\/p>\n

His stories and novels (the novels include Summer Fire<\/em> and The Conversion of Jeff William<\/em>s as well as The Tree House<\/em>) were full of his dry wit and keen observations of human nature, and some were very hard. His story, \u201cWolves!\u201d which was recently anthologized in Dispensation<\/em> (Angela Hallstrom, ed) depicted rape and slow recovery. It is a violent and disturbing story, and author Neal Chandler told me he thought it was the best thing Doug had yet written.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s the essence of Doug\u2019s writing life: He was still writing.\u00a0 He was always becoming a better writer.<\/p>\n

The other parts of his life were also about growth and evolution, including the evolution of faith.\u00a0 When the mother of our colleague, Bruce Jorgensen, was in a care center, Doug began quietly visiting and comforting her.\u00a0 He and my husband gave her a blessing.\u00a0 This is one of many examples, most of which I only imagine, of Doug\u2019s unheralded charity.\u00a0 It was a part of how Doug lived his life.\u00a0 He simply did good.\u00a0 No fanfare.<\/p>\n

He enjoyed teaching his children the value of hard work, and insisted that lawn mowing include careful edging.\u00a0 (His sons had a lawn mowing business.) He loved them and was proud of them.<\/p>\n

He loved Donlu. No fanfare.<\/p>\n

I have some of my own stories in anthologies which feature Doug\u2019s.\u00a0 What\u2019s not written is what I write now: Without Douglas Heal Thayer, many of us Mormon writers would have lacked the mentoring we needed at the time when we needed it. Our stories might not have been written had Doug Thayer not written his.\u00a0 He was a teacher and an exemplar\u2014beyond the classroom, and beyond the written text.\u00a0 He has been called (with Don Marshall) the vanguard of the \u201csecond generation\u201d of LDS literature, coming after the \u201clost generation.\u201d We who are now in our fifties and sixties were just coming of age when Doug taught us what a good \u201ccoming of age\u201d story is.\u00a0 Many of us have gone on not only to write, but to teach.\u00a0 Whatever bit of light we have passed on to our students came, in part, from Douglas Thayer. The reflections of his bright star on the pages of Mormon literary history will go on forever. Those of us who knew him were blessed by this legacy, which we gratefully pass on.<\/p>\n

Of course, I must finish with that line which I can imagine Angel Doug asking me at his funeral service: \u201cMargaret, are you grieving?\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh yes.\u00a0 Yes, yes.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMargaret, are you gr\u00edeving Over Golden grove unleaving?\u201d This is how Douglas Thayer often greeted me when we met in the hallway of the Jesse Knight Building, where both of us taught for years.\u00a0 I wonder if I was the only person who got such a greeting from his rich supply of poems.\u00a0 I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1301,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[359,161],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-douglas-thayer","tag-mormon-literature"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Tribute: Douglas Heal Thayer (April 19, 1929-October 17, 2017)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cMargaret, are you gr\u00edeving Over Golden grove unleaving?\u201d This is how Douglas Thayer often greeted me when we met in the hallway of the Jesse Knight\" 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