Paul Thayer Remembered For Formative Contributions to APS
APS Past Board Member Paul W. Thayer, an industrial-organization scientist who played an integral role in the association’s development, passed away January 25, 2017. He was 89.
Thayer served as the founding chair of the APS Finance Committee and was a longtime APS Treasurer. In a 2008 Observer article marking the association’s 20th anniversary, he recalled preparing the first annual budget.
“I made three of them — an expected, a best scenario, and worst scenario, based on income and expense figures the various members of the organizing group gave me,” he said. “[Then-APS-President] Janet Spence thought I was enchanted when our first year came in right on the ‘expected.’ (Some guesses are better than others.)”
APS Founding Executive Director Alan G. Kraut remembers Thayer as the “financial heart-and-soul” of the association.
“Throughout the many years of Paul’s exceptional service to APS, it became a rite of passage for us to get Paul’s okay on any projected change for any budget number,” Kraut said. “If Paul said it was reasonable, we went with it. No exceptions.”
Thayer was also an enthusiastic participant in the APS Annual Conventions, and even attended the 2016 convention in Chicago. In the 20th anniversary article, he recalled the association’s first convention in 1989.
“We booked a hotel in Arlington, [Virginia], “had so many advanced registrations we had to move to a bigger hotel, and held the first reception in the parking lot,” he wrote. “The APS Board met sitting on the lawn over sandwiches and sodas.”
Thayer was professor emeritus of psychology at North Carolina State University, where he headed the department from 1977 to 1992. Before then, he worked at the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association for 21 years, rising from training researcher, through research vice president, to senior vice president. He had been a consultant for the US Army, Navy, and Air Force, as well as IBM, GM, GlaxoWellcome, the federal and state governments, many small firms, and hundreds of insurance companies.
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