Tim Mayhew was a gay community activist in Seattle throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. He became an archivist of the gay community, collecting materials related to gay activism from Seattle groups he was involved in and from many other organizations. Mayhew donated his collections (see Related Collections) to the University of Washington Special Collections in the 1990s. Maxwell Timothy Mayhew was born in Detroit on January 1, 1941 to Maxwell and Jeanne Mayhew. His family lived in Denver, then Salt Lake City, and Salmon, Idaho before moving to Spokane, Washington where Mayhew attended high school. He played flute and piccolo in his high school marching band and in the Husky Marching Band at the University of Washington. He majored in Russian language and linguistics, but interrupted his studies to volunteer in the Army, where he served as a medic stationed at Fort Lewis. After his honorable discharge, he returned to the UW, where he earned a BA and completed graduate studies.

Mayhew was a member of the Seattle Gay Alliance (SGA) in the early 1970s. He served as the chair of the SGA Education Committee circa 1972-1975 and as SGA's first lobbyist in Olympia, Washington in 1973. He helped found Seattle's first Gay Community Center in 1971 and was also involved with the Gay Liberation Front. For several years in the 1970s he served as Seattle editor of the Northwest Gay Review, a newspaper based in Portland, Oregon. He was a member of the ACLU of Washington and served on its Sexual Minorities Committee around 1977 to 1980. Among his many public testimonies and statements are the Position Statement on Homosexual Civil Liberties and Position Statement on Marriage for the ACLU of Washington in 1971. He lobbied in Olympia again circa 1981. In 1993 he helped found the Harvey Muggy Lesbian/Gay Democratic Organization.

Mayhew died on April 30, 2017 in Seattle.