EUGENE KUTHY

Eugene W. Kuthy Remembered

Eugene W. Kuthy, an outsize figure and personality in the lives as in the memory of his friends and family, died of the effects of Parkinson's disease on December 12, 2016. He is survived by his wife, Tara Robinson, and his four adult children and their spouses: Douglas E. Kuthy and Paula Lasecki; James and Patty Kuthy; Thomas and Nancy Kuthy and Robin Kuthy Richter and her husband Tom Richter. Six grandchildren, Allison, Daniel, Alex, Anne, Jon and Grace will miss him profoundly. Two great grandchildren will not have his benevolent love and desire to tickle, to sustain them.

Mr. Kuthy, trained as a lawyer at the University of Michigan and what was the Detroit College of Law, found himself in Officer Candidate School during the Korean War, and the result was an abiding love of the U.S. Navy, which, after he left active duty, and his absorbing work in the Pentagon, continued to be a priority in his life in the form of over thirty years in the Naval Reserve Security Group, from which he retired as a Captain.

As he kept the Navy in his life, so he maintained ties with his undergraduate Alma Mater, the University of Michigan, teaching courses in business law and management at the University of Michigan Dearborn campus, and maintaining friendships of the days of Vaughan House, a University of Michigan dormitory that housed WWII veterans along with younger undergraduates. Two of his oldest friends from those days recently pre-deceased him but while alive continued to tell stories about how they met and became life-long pals.

Mr. Kuthy did not practice law for long, but put his LLD, experience to work in community development, transportation, politics, management consulting [for Ernst and Whiney} and even art when he became the Deputy Director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Politics was a great passion and he ran for office in the early days of the incorporation of Oakland County, Michigan, narrowly missing the election on a Democratic ticket in a hugely Republic county in the 1970s. He worked for Democrats, raising money for presidents, senators, and local legislators and mentoring some outstanding young people as they sought their maiden political positions in the state Legislature until he could no longer actively participate.

In the 1980s he joined former governor James J. Blanchard's administration as the head of the Financial Institutions Bureau, which at the time regulated state banks. True to his philosophy of in for a dime, in for a dollar, he soon became prominent in the Conference of State Banking Supervisors, rising to the position of President. As a result, and to his delight, in later life he was asked to join the new bank board and the founding of what is now Main Street Bank, from which his encroaching illness later caused him to stand down.

Mr. Kuthy was stoic about his battle with Parkinson's Disease, but slowly succumbed as the disease took more and more of who he was and finally took him which under the care of Hospice, just days shy of his 86th birthday.

Cremation has taken place and Mr. Kuthy will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington, VA.