“I got on the radio and said, ‘We need all the help we can get, right away,” Gen. Thayer recalled. His son, Tommy, is lead guitarist in the rock band Kiss.
Gen. James B. Thayer, who helped liberate a Nazi death camp during World War II and later had a long business and military career in Oregon, died Sunday. He was 96.
Word of his passing came via an announcement by the rock band Kiss, in which Thayer’s son, Tommy, is lead guitarist.
“First and foremost he was a great family man and great father, but had a great military, business and civilian career,” Tommy Thayer said Monday. “He liked to help people and organizations that needed help.”
Thayer was born in Portland but grew up on a farm in the Yamhill County town of Carlton. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Oregon.
He received the Silver Star and Bronze Star for his service in the U.S. Army during World War II, and was credited with liberating the Gunskirchen Nazi death camp, which he discovered while leading a platoon in Austria in May 1945.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he recalled in an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive in 2012. “I got on the radio and said, ‘We need all the help we can get, right away.’
After the war, Thayer served as a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. He was later promoted to brigadier general and commander of the Oregon State Defense Force.
Source: Gen. James Thayer, liberator of Nazi death camp, dies at 96 | OregonLive.com
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