‘A true gentleman’: Former county commissioner dies at 87

As Steve Dershem was reading the election report at Tuesday’s Centre County Board of Commissioners meeting, he said he was reflecting on the passing of “a very good friend of Centre County government.”

John Saylor, a former Centre County commissioner, died on Saturday, at age 87.

“John was one of those bigger-than-life figures I always thought would be here, and he was a great mentor and certainly a kind individual,” Dershem said.

The pair served on the board together when Saylor took over Scott Conklin’s unexpired term in 2006 when he was elected as a state representative.

Prior to that, Saylor had served four terms as a county commissioner (two of them as board chairman). He was first elected to the role in 1975. At that time, he had already been active in politics: He was the treasurer and secretary of the Centre County Democratic Committee, and he was elected as a Democratic State Committee member in 1972.

Keith Bierly, whose first term as a county commissioner coincided with Saylor’s fourth, described Saylor as “a true gentleman.”

“I never — and this is unusual in local politics — heard him say a negative word about anybody,” Bierly said. “And usually when you’re in the political environment, you have issues with different people and you tend to say negative things about them, but that just wasn’t John. He just did not do that. And that was a very admirable trait in local politics.”

He continued: “He just was the kind of guy that the more you knew him, the more you liked him.”

The “highlight” of their time together on the board, Bierly said, was the development of the Willowbank Building.

Saylor was “instrumental,” he said, in taking the old hospital building and turning it into a modern office complex. He wanted to combine the county’s human services along with the commissioners’ office — and in doing so, saved the county millions of dollars.

Bierly explained that the county was paying rent at different locations for office space and then, with the consolidation, that money was going into a capital project and increasing the worth of the Willowbank Building.

Saylor loved Centre Crest and Children and Youth Services — those kinds of agencies that help people, Bierly said, adding that Saylor saw human services as the primary focus of the commissioners’ office.

He identified with people who needed a second or third shot, and he was willing to give it to them, Bierly said.

At Tuesday’s commissioners’ meeting, board Chairman Michael Pipe called the Willowbank Building a “fitting tribute to (Saylor’s) life of service.”

After his retirement as a commissioner, according to his obituary, Saylor continued his participation in the community, serving on the boards of other county agencies, including the Centre Crest Trust, the Centre County Community Foundation and C-Net. He was also a member of the Bellefonte American Legion Post 33, Bellefonte Moose Lodge 206, Bellefonte Elks Lodge 1094, the Knights of Columbus Council 1314, the Bellefonte Kiwanis and the Logan Fire Company. For several years, he served as the bugler for the Bellefonte Veterans Honor Guard.

According to Saylor’s obituary, there will be a public viewing held from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Thursday at St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, 134 E. Bishop St., Bellefonte. Funeral Mass is scheduled for 11 a.m., and burial with full military honors — Saylor enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at the start of the Korean War — will take place in St. John’s Catholic Cemetery in Bellefonte.