Mr John Borland (“Jack”) Thayer Jr., 17, was born on December 24, 1894, the son of Marian and John Borland Thayer of Haverford, PA. The family boarded the Titanic as first class passengers. John Thayer was in bed, and Jack and his mother were preparing for bed when Jack noticed the breeze through his half-open porthole stop. He remembered no significant shock and did not lose his balance. He ran up on A deck on the port side but could see nothing amiss and then went towards the bow where, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he could make out ice on the forward well deck. He returned to the stateroom to get his parents and they went to the starboard side of A deck. As they crossed to the port side they noticed that the ship had developed a list to port. They then returned to their room and dressed. They stayed together until the order was given for women and children to board the boats. Jack and his father said good-bye to Marian at the top of the grand staircase on A-Deck. Then Marian and her maid Miss Fleming went out on A deck on the port side while Jack and his father went to the starboard side but he soon became seperated from his father. As the ship sank deeper and more rapidly he decided to jump into the water. He surfaced well clear of the ship and he and others struggled in the water for several hours endeavoring to hold afloat by grabbing to the sides and end of an overturned life-boat. After a night on the upturned boat he and the others, a “grimy, wiry disheveled, hard-looking lot,” were picked up by lifeboats 4 and 12, He was so distracted trying to get into boat 12 that he did not notice his mother in 4 nearby and she was so numbed by cold she did not see him. At 8.30 a.m. boat 12 finally arrived at the Carpathia where he was reunited with his mother. While on the Carpathia he described the sinking to passenger L.D. Skidmore who drew a sequence of pictures based on the recollections.
Jack Thayer graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and went into banking; later he returned to the University as Financial Vice-President and Treasurer. He married Lois Cassatt and they had two sons. Edward C. Thayer and John B. Thayer IV.In 1940 he produced a pamphlet relating his experiences on the Titanic as an attempt, perhaps, to exorcise some of the memories that still haunted him. During the second world war both of his sons joined the services. It is likely that the bout of depression that afflicted him following the death of his son Edward on active service in the pacific led directly to his death, by his own hand, in 1945.. He was buried at the Church of the Redeemer Cemetery, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.