Roger Eugene Thayer

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Roger Eugene Thayer died on Dec. 12, 2019, at the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.

Roger was born on Nov. 29, 1926, in Ithaca, Tompkins County, N.Y., first son of Paul Edward Thayer, who founded the Thayer Radio Co., and Veda Mary Zellar Thayer, organist for State Street Methodist Church. Roger graduated from Ithaca High School in 1944, enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps as an air cadet, trained as a radar technician at Lowry Field in Denver, and was honorably discharged in 1945 to pursue his college education at Cornell University, where he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1949. Roger went on to get a master’s in electrical engineering at Cornell in 1951, publishing “Radar Echoes from the Aurora Borealis.” He worked for the General Electric Co. summers from 1948. He married Jane Hillis from New York City; she was also a student at Cornell in June 1951. They moved to Washington, D.C., after she graduated in 1952, and Roger took a Job with the then-secret National Security Agency (NSA), where he developed radio intercept equipment.

Roger got an NSA fellowship in 1955 to attend Harvard University, where he received a master’s in applied physics, specializing in radio antenna theory and radio propagation. In 1957, NSA sent him to Japan to head its laboratory in Tokyo responsible for, among other work, Soviet radio intercepts, including those from the first manmade earth satellite, Sputnik; it inspired the remainder of his career, conceiving, promoting, and developing U.S. electronic spy satellites. In 1963 NSA detached him to the then-also-secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in the Pentagon, where he was responsible for their radar and communications intercept satellites, for which he was recently honored with a Certificate of Recognition and included on a DVD of the declassified POPPY Program, operated for the NRO by the U.S. Navy Naval Research Laboratory to intercept and locate foreign radars.

In 1973 he was sent to work with the CIA on other secret signals intelligence projects. He retired from NSA in 1986. In 1989 he was called back to help write a history of SIGINT satellite projects developed prior to 1975. In 2005, one of those book chapters, “POPPY,” was declassified, and its general description is on the Internet (search “NRO history.”)

Since 1989, Roger volunteered for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, whose National Headquarters and Library is in Princeton, N.J. At the time, he recorded portions of mainly electronics and other technical textbooks in the Washington, D.C., studio. After moving to Martha’s Vineyard in 1995, he was loaned recording equipment to continue work from his home in Sengekontacket. He amassed a record of over 6,100 hours of volunteer recording, more than anyone to date for the Washington studio, completing over 48 books in their entirety, such as Weinberg’s “Discovery of Atomic Particles,” Kaplans’ “The Art of the Infinite,” Boone’s “A Brief History of Cryptology,” and Worldwatch Institute’s “State of the World,” and several hundred books of which he recorded parts or chapters.

Roger began singing as a kindergartner in Ithaca, sang in the Episcopal Boys Choir, Boynton Junior High Chorus, then, as a tenor, in the Ithaca High School Men’s Glee Club, serving as president in 1944; he also was president of the Cornell Men’s Glee Club in 1949, sang in church choirs in Ithaca, Virginia, Maryland, and Martha’s Vineyard. He was a member of the semiprofessional Paul Hill Chorale in Washington, D.C., singing over 100 concerts in the Kennedy Center Concert Hall, including at its opening in 1971. On Martha’s Vineyard he sang with the Island Community Chorus since 1996, and the NAACP Spirituals Choir in 2006, which became the Jim Thomas Slavesongs Choir from 2007. He played tenor sax in the Ithaca High School Marching Band and the Cornell Big Red Band. He played bassoon in the Junior High Orchestra, and bass viol in the High School Orchestra.

In 1998, after moving permanently to the Vineyard from Potomac, Md., he became secretary of the Sengekontacket Community, to which he and Jane had belonged since 1990.

Roger was a member of Unitarian churches in Ithaca, N.Y., Arlington, Va., Silver Spring and Potomac, Md., was a “Friend” of Martha’s Vineyard’s Unitarian Universalist Society, and sang in several UU choirs. Recent work with the UUSMV included working for peace.

He was predeceased in October 2016 by Jane, his wife of 65 years, who inspired him in his writing and peace efforts; and by their daughter, Peggy, in January 2010. He is survived by their son, David, and his partner, Diane Witteveld; their daughter Cyndy and her partner, Evelyn Mathis, who devoted her time these past two years caring for him; their grandson, David, and his wife Julie; his daughter-in-law, Sandy Raymond, Peggy’s widow; his brother, Larry, and wife Alice; and numerous cousins, nephews and nieces.

His funeral service will be held at a later date. Donations in his memory may be made to Hospice of M.V., P.O. Box 1478, Vineyard Haven, MA 02557, or to Elder Services of Cape Cod and the Islands, 68 Route 134, South Dennis, MA 02660. Arrangements are under the care of the Chapman, Cole and Gleason Funeral Home, Edgartown Road, Oak Bluffs. Visit ccgfuneralhome.com for online guestbook and information.