Richard D. Kudner

1927 - 2023

News story
By Mark Zaborney
Blade Staff Writer

Richard D. Kudner, who as a Champion Spark Plug vice president made sure the Toledo-based auto-parts giant and its familiar bowtie logo remained in the public eye, died Monday in the nursing unit of Ohio Living Swan Creek. He was 95.

He had Alzheimer's disease, said his daughter, Carrie Hayden. He and his wife, Martha, lived for many years in Perrysburg before moving to the Browning Masonic Community in Waterville and, most recently, Swan Creek.

Mr. Kudner retired in 1990 as vice president of sales and marketing for Champion, having become its director of advertising in 1961. He'd previously handled the firm's account while working for the famed advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson.

He was named to Champion's board of directors and promoted to vice president of advertising and merchandising in 1969.

"He was very dedicated, very honest," said Richard Waterman, whose executive roles with Champion included director of international marketing services. "He was very consistent in his thinking and open to suggestions as to what could be done to improve our marketing. And he was just a nice guy."

Mr. Kudner helped make the company logo omnipresent - on race car drivers' suits and their cars. He offered race track owners a no-charge repainting of the walls at turns, if they agreed to have the Champion bowtie on the walls.

A former president of the Automotive Advertisers Council, Mr. Kudner was a leader in trade organizations. He also amassed honors from industry groups through the years, including "marketing man of the year" in 1971 by the northwest Ohio chapter of the American Marketing Association; "outstanding advertising man of the year" in 1972 by the Advertising Club of Toledo; the distinguished service citation presented in conjunction with the National Automobile Dealers Association, and the Triangle Award for major contributions to the automotive industry by the Motor and Equipment Manufacturers Association.

He was the force behind newspaper special sections on car care promoted by Champion. The concept "blossomed into a real marketing success story," The Blade reported in 1983.

The sections began in 1968 at about eight pages. By the early 1980s the average section had at least 17 pages and went to more than 1,200 newspapers with circulation totaling about 80 million. Many of the newspapers used Champion's articles, which generally were noncommercial, to supplement their own auto-maintenance stories.

"He realized the value of the local newspaper in bringing news and information to readers," Mrs. Hayden said.

But for all accolades he received, his greatest pride was "the work his people did," Mrs. Hayden said. "He was proud of his team, all of them. He would be proud that Champion was so well recognized throughout the world as a good company and a good product."

His paternal grandfather owned the newspaper in Lapeer, Mich., and he had majored in journalism at the University of Michigan.

"He was very inquisitive," Mrs. Hayden said. "The written word was important to him and he understood the power and value of it."

For a time in retirement, Mr. Kudner was a consultant and helped coordinate the hosting of automotive after-market trade shows.

He devoted much of his effort to local causes - civic, nature, historical. He volunteered for the Black Swamp Conservancy, a land-conservation organization. As president of the Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor, Mr. Kudner helped lead efforts to foster recognition of the Maumee River, from Fort Wayne, Ind., to Maumee Bay. In 2000, then-Gov. Bob Taft named the corridor a state heritage area.

"What he brought was his passion for people, his passion for history, and his passion for using history as a means of understanding what came before us," said Ted Ligibel, a founder and former president of the heritage corridor group. "He wanted to know what the facts were, and he was good about making sure that when he said something, he knew what he was talking about."

In 2009, the nonprofit organization Scenic Ohio honored the Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor for gaining an official designation 10 years earlier for the Maumee Valley Scenic Byway, a 60-mile expanse of highway on both sides of the Maumee between Defiance and Toledo.

Scenic Ohio also honored the heritage corridor for helping with the National Park Service designation for Fallen Timbers Battlefield and Fort Miamis in Maumee and promoting the Maumee River.

That designation for Fallen Timbers and Fort Miamis "was a major win for preservation, and Dick was very much a part of that," said Mr. Ligibel, a professor emeritus and director emeritus of historic preservation at Eastern Michigan University.

"He was such an affable, friendly, twinkle-in-the-eye kind of guy," Mr. Ligibel said. "He was a straight shooter. He was a loyal friend. He was someone you could count on."

Mr. Kudner served on the advisory committee for the battlefield and regularly presented local audiences a slide program called "Fifteen Layers of History," about the Maumee River Valley.

Born Dec. 31, 1927, in Jackson, Mich., to Phyllis and Dr. Don Kudner, he worked as a teenager at the Jackson Citizen-Patriot newspaper. He was a graduate of Culver Military Academy in Indiana. After graduating in 1950 from UM, he worked in his hometown newspaper's promotion department before taking a job with his uncle's advertising agency.

Surviving are his wife, the former Martha Marshall, whom he married July 31, 1954; daughter, Carrie Hayden; sons, Bill and Don Kudner; three grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

A memorial celebration of life event will begin at 11 a.m. Monday at the Perrysburg Boat Club. Arrangements are by Witzler-Shank-Walker Funeral Home, Perrysburg.

The family suggests tributes to Little Traverse Conservancy in Harbor Springs, Mich.; Black Swamp Conservancy, Perrysburg, or Maumee Valley Heritage Corridor, Perrysburg.