Michael Brook Mayor, MD, died peacefully at the age of 87 on March 31, 2025 at Kendal of Hanover, NH surrounded by his family.
He was born on October 29, 1937, in Bryn Mawr, PA, to Brantz Mayor and Evelyn Griswold Mayor. Along with his sisters, Harriet, Kate, and Susan, he was raised on a fifty-acre farm in Mt. Kisco, NY. At the age of seven, Michael’s childhood was marked by the sudden tragic death of his mother due to a skiing accident-an event that eventually led to his stepmother, Ana Maria Funk, and half-siblings, Maria and Archer, entering his life.
Michael was graduated from the Harvey School and then from Deerfield Academy in 1955. While at Deerfield, his knee began to hurt and x-rays revealed a tumor on his femur, requiring an above-the-knee amputation of his leg. Persevering through a challenging rehabilitation, he went on to be the only student at Yale permitted to have a vehicle on campus (a scooter with a sidecar), and earned his Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1959.
After graduation, following advice from many of his friends to consider going into medicine, Michael took a job testing fecal samples at St Luke’s hospital. In spite of the many unsavory tasks, he found medical work fascinating and soon returned to Yale as a special student to complete the needed pre-med courses. He then applied and was admitted to Yale School of Medicine and received his MD in 1965.
During his time at St. Luke’s, Michael also learned to downhill ski on one leg with a pair of outrigger poles. This new skill led him to go on a ski trip where he met the love of his life, Elizabeth (‘Lili’) Fenner Rowland. Lili and Michael were married in 1961 and had four children together during his residency in Cleveland, OH. In 1971, they moved the family to Hanover, NH, where they acquired a house on Occom Ridge as part of an estate sale. After paying a grand total of $42,000 for the dilapidated house, they embarked on a total renovation to make it into the home they would enjoy together for the next thirty years. After that, they built and moved to their second Hanover home on Three Mile Road nearby the 92-acre parcel that Lili, Michael, and John Niles donated to the Hanover Conservancy in 2015, called the Mayor-Niles Forest.
Michael’s medical career began with surgical training under Charlie Herndon at the University Hospitals of Cleveland, where he assisted Herndon in the first ever hip joint replacements in the US. While still a student, Michael was then tasked with teaching the University Hospitals faculty how to do the surgery. This experience was followed by an NIH fellowship in bioengineering at the Case Institute, which solidified his interest in medical research.
Michael then accepted the position of orthopaedic surgical attending at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital and Hitchcock Clinic, and joined the faculty at Dartmouth Medical School. He spent the remainder of his career at Dartmouth as a practicing surgeon, educator, and co-founder of the Orthopaedic Device Retrieval Program at Dartmouth Biomedical Engineering Center (DBEC) with Thayer School of Engineering professor John P. Collier.
Michael’s clinical career centered around the practice of joint replacement surgeries, replacing an estimated 3,000 hips and 4,000 knees over his 40 years. His work with Professor Collier began in 1974 when they teamed up to test the efficacy and safety of a new porous coating for biological implants. That project revealed the need for a central resource for evaluating the performance of orthopaedic implants. They recruited four other US orthopaedic surgical centers and created DBEC’s program for retrieval analysis to study these devices and provide direct feedback to the manufacturers and implanting surgeons.
During Michael’s nearly 50-year commitment to this program, it became and remains one of the largest of its kind in the world with over 20,000 retrievals and counting. Its findings have led to critical advances in the production, design, and materials of orthopaedic implants, resulting in profound quality-of-life improvements for millions of patients worldwide.
A multi-sport athlete in high school, Michael found ways to continue his love of athletics after the loss of his leg. He was a lifelong hiker and skier-both alpine and nordic as well as slalom water skiing-a competitive kayaker, and technical tree climber. He also inherited a passion for darkroom photography and a knack for woodworking and tinkering from his father. He enjoyed the outdoors, especially when perched atop a John Deere tractor or an Argo amphibious vehicle, and took it upon himself to keep his family well-supplied with firewood during countless NH winters.
He loved animals-his childhood chores included tending to Aberdeen Angus cattle, hogs, and chickens-and he helped care for a lifelong parade of family pets. But most of all, he loved spending time with his family, finding great joy in witnessing their journeys and growth.
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth (“Lili”), his four children, Rowland, Anna Hyatt, Sloane, and Catha, and ten grandchildren.
Per his wishes, the family has arranged a private natural/green burial on family land. A celebration of life for the wider community will be scheduled at a later time.
In lieu of flowers, a donation may be made in his name to a humane society of choice.