David S. Thorley was an eyewitness to labor history in Northeast Ohio.For nearly a quarter century, Mr. Thorley served as a federal mediator and worked long hours attempting to resolve disputes between labor and management.Mr. Thorley, 74, of Silver Lake, died Monday from multiple myeloma, a disease he fought nearly 11 years.“He’s a combination of Gary Cooper and Jimmy Stewart and a lot of the old people in the West who were soft-spoken but carried a silent gun,” the late Akron School Superintendent Conrad Ott told the Beacon Journal’s Bob Dyer in a 1998 Beacon Magazine article about Mr. Thorley’s retirement.A native of Wayne County, Mr. Thorley worked as a machinist at Akron Brass and in 1964 became president of the International Association of Machinists Local 1581. By 1968, he was a staff representative for the International Association of Machinists and was hired as a mediator by the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service in 1975.His daughter, Elizabeth Thorley, of Rochester, N.Y., said her father always told her that he had a successful negotiation in a labor dispute “when both sides were not happy, meaning both had to compromise.”She said her father “worked crazy hours” and was always “cool as a cucumber. He never lost his temper.”In labor disputes, she said, “he put people in a meeting and made them stay there until they resolved issues, especially teachers.”He traveled so much resolving labor issues that “he knew the entire state, back and forth.”A 1988 Beacon Journal story reported that Mr. Thorley put 45,000 miles a year on his car, “not looking for trouble, but purposefully putting himself in the middle of it.”Elizabeth Thorley said her father was good at making a situation calm by being “reasonable and rational and not letting things get out of hand.”After retiring in 1998, he continued to work and was even involved in an arbitration in December.She said the key to her father’s success was that he was good at getting people to talk.“He never got excited,” she said. “He didn’t let emotions take over.”Mr. Thorley loved softball and was a district director of the United States Slowpitch Softball Association.Longtime friend, Frank Bernert, of Stow, said he learned “how to laugh” and learned patience from Mr. Thorley.“He never had an enemy,” he said. “His best attribute was caring. He never said no to anybody.”Mr. Thorley was a regular for as long as anyone can remember at Isaly’s II on state Route 59 in Stow and before that the original Isaly’s where he would eat breakfast every morning.On the morning of the Ohio State-Michigan football game each year, Mr. Thorley played the Ohio State fight song from a boom box and marched around the restaurant.His last visit to Isaly’s was Thursday, Bernert said.“He was one of the greatest men I’ve ever known in my life,” said Gina Fox, of Akron, his waitress for the past quarter century.She said he always ordered the same thing: one egg over easy, whole wheat toast, burned, and coffee with cream.“I’ve never seen him in a bad mood, not one day, even when he had cancer,” she said.Along with daughter Elizabeth Thorley, he is survived by daughters Tamara J. Thorley of Elkton, Md., and Sue R. Vanderhoof of Stow, 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by a daughter Mary A. Fromm.Calling hours will be held from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Dunn-Quigley Funeral Home at 3333 Kent Road in Stow and from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday at the McIntire, Davis, & Greene Funeral Home at 216 E. Larwill St. in Wooster where the funeral service will be held at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Thorley Memorial Fund, Rochester Area Community Foundation, 500 East Ave., Rochester, N.Y. 14607.Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.