Alton C Thacker's Obituary
Alton C. Thacker, 89, died in his home in West Jordan, UT on November 26, 2024. He died peacefully of natural causes and was surrounded by family.
Alton was born on October 19, 1935 in Duchesne, UT to LeRoy Thacker and Weltha Osborn. He was the youngest of 14 children and was raised on a farm in nearby Altamont, where he swam in creeks and rode horses and had a variety of different jobs, including cleaning the clinkers out of the high school furnace and working at the cheese factory. Life in Altamont taught him the value of hard work from an early age, but he also learned the value of play and recreation to a well-balanced life.
In 1953 he married his sweetheart, Cheryl Kay Remington, in the Manti Temple two days after her high school graduation and the end of his junior year of high school. He then graduated from Altamont High School as a married man in 1954. Alton and Cheryl had eight children: Kim, David, April, Todd, Russell, Hal, Nicole, and Ashley. Even after more than 70 years of marriage, Alton still called Cheryl his sweetheart and bragged often that he married the smartest, prettiest girl in the whole school.
In their early years, Alton and Cheryl spent time in Salt Lake City and Vernal, UT, and Cortez, CO, where Alton worked in various construction jobs, including on the Flaming Gorge Dam, where his backhoe was the last machine out of the bottom of Flaming Gorge. They finally settled in Orem, UT, where Alton worked as a barber at the BYU Wilkinson Center and eventually opened Al’s Style Shop, where he cut hair for almost 30 years and once even trimmed the luscious locks of the incomparable Robert Redford himself. Later, he and Cheryl spent several summers near the Arctic Circle in Candle, Alaska, cooking for the crew that worked at a gold mine there.
In his spare time, Alton enjoyed hunting, camping, cowboy poetry, attending the annual Utah State Fair, and playing the banjo and mandolin and singing old-time folk songs like “Horsie, Horsie on Your Way,” “Mr. Mr. Dunderback,” and “Two Little Boys had Two Little Toys,” just to name a few. He’s one of the few modern men who could say he built a house with his own hands, and he loved the many holidays and family gatherings he spent at that place in the mountains above Heber.
But his greatest joy by far came from serving others. In his retirement, Alton founded Tiny Tim’s Foundation for Kids in 1996 after making several trips to northern Mexico with a group of Utah eye doctors who collected used eyeglasses and traveled to Mexico to fit them to people who needed them but could not otherwise afford them. On these trips Alton noticed that many children in these poorer parts of the country did not have toys, and he decided to do something about it. He understood the value of a toy in sparking a child’s imagination, so he started making wooden toy cars to give to children in Mexico on his next trip there.
That first year he and Cheryl made about 400 toy cars in their garage and gave them away to children in Mexico. They made many trips to Mexico over the years with hundreds of Tiny Tim volunteers, handing out toys to children and countless boxes of essentials to those in need. From those humble beginnings, Tiny Tim’s Foundation for Kids has grown to building more than 100,000 toy cars a year with help from more than 1,000 volunteers each month and has given away more than 1.7 million toy cars in more than 110 countries around the world. Alton was fond of saying, “If you want to be happy, do something for somebody else,” and he dedicated his life to living up to that ideal. Many who knew him would say that he was the happiest person they knew; that his smile and laughter lit up every room he walked into.
In 2022 Alton formally handed the reins to Tiny Tim’s Foundation to his daughter, Ashley Krause, and his granddaughter, Emilee Johnson, who continue Alton’s mission of putting smiles on children’s faces everywhere.
Alton is survived by his wife of 71 years, Cheryl Kay Remington; his sister, Anna Lee Mathews; his children, Kim (Mike), David (Kelly), Todd (Carol), Russell (Staci), Hal (Bonnie), Nicole, and Ashley (Jason); 27 grandchildren; and 63 great grandchildren.
Viewings will be held at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints at 8539 S 2200 W in West Jordan, UT on Friday, November 29 from 5-8pm and Saturday, November 30 from 8-10am, and funeral services will be held there on Saturday, November 30 at 10am, after which his family will inter him at the Altamont – Mt. Emmons Cemetery in Altamont, UT. In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to Tiny Tim’s Foundation for Kids at tinytimstoys.org/donate.
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