He and other crew and passengers, including Junior Wireless Officer Harold Bride, Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, Chief Baker Charles Joughin, and Second Officer Charles Lightoller (who was the most senior surviving crew member), were able to keep the overturned boat steady for some hours. Thayer later recalled that the cries of hundreds of people in the water reminded him of the high-pitched hum of locusts in his native Pennsylvania. After spending the night on the overturned Collapsible B, Thayer was pulled to safety into Lifeboat 12. He was so distraught and frozen that he did not notice his mother in nearby Lifeboat 4; nor did she notice him. Lifeboat 12 was the last lifeboat to reach the , the first rescue ship to arrive at the scene, at 8:30 a.m. Thayer's father did not board a lifeboat and perished in the sinking. Thayer was one of about 40 persons who jumped or fell into the water and survived. In his privately published 1940 account of the sinking, Thayer recalled what life was like before the "Titanic sank", "There was peace and the world had an even tenor to its way. Nothing was revealed in the morning the trend of which was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub its eyes and awake but woke it with a start keeping it moving at a rapidly accelerating pace ever since with less and less peace, satisfaction and happiness. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912". Thayer went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the honor society Saint Anthony Hall. On December 15, 1917, Thayer married Lois Buchanan Cassatt, daughter of Edward B. Cassatt and Emily L. Phillips. Her grandfather was Alexander Johnston Cassatt, President of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The couple had two sons, Edward Cassatt and John Borland IV, and three daughters, Lois, Julie, and Pauline. A third son, Alexander Johnston Cassatt Thayer, died a few days after his birth in 1920. During World War I, he served as an artillery officer in the U.S Army. During World War II, both of Thayer's sons enlisted in the armed services. Edward, a bomber pilot, was listed as missing and presumed dead after his plane was shot down in 1943 in the Pacific theatre. His body was never recovered. When the news reached Thayer, he became extremely depressed.