William Kuhlman

1927 - 2015

William A. Kuhlman, an artist and illustrator who had an advertising agency and corporate clients, but whose signs and depictions of wildlife, wildflowers, and history have greeted park-goers across northern Ohio for decades, died Thursday in his Monclova Township home. He was 87.

He had been in ill health since a stroke in 2010, his daughter Laura said.

Mr. Kuhlman, formerly of Whitehouse, opened an agency in Toledo and in the 1960s and 1970s produced illustrations and graphic-design work for local corporations, automotive and pharmaceutical firms, and the Edison Institute - the Dearborn, Mich., complex of the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village.

"My dad was a big dreamer," his daughter said. "If he had a vision, he would go for it. My mom was supportive, and she was the business side of the couple, and she was the bookkeeper."

He grew up in Maumee and Grand Rapids, Ohio, and paid close attention to nature.

"His life was very centered on the Maumee River," his daughter said.

By the early 1980s, he sold his agency, by then in Perrysburg, to concentrate on illustration. He had decades of noncorporate experience.

In 1957, Mr. Kuhlman was named art editor of the Northwest Ohio Quarterly, and the next year the Historical Society of Northwestern Ohio honored him for "beautifying and dignifying" the publication. A few years later, he and Marilyn Stevens produced a multimedia production, The Village, on the history of Grand Rapids - a book, which he illustrated, plus a film.

Later, the late Bob Metz, then executive director of the Metroparks of the Toledo Area, hired Mr. Kuhlman to paint nature scenes for display in the parks. Mr. Kuhlman later produced nature scenes, interpretive illustrations, and signs not only there but for the Magee Marsh Bird Trail and park districts in Erie, Franklin, Geauga, Hancock, and Sandusky counties.

"He was a high-level professional," said Jesse Mireles, retired Metroparks art director and himself an illustrator and artist. "He loved nature and history and did a marvelous job illustrating.

"He also was kind of cantankerous. He would put up a fight about things that were not like he thought they should be," Mr. Mireles said. "It was worth the fight when the final product was done, because it was beautiful in the end."

LaRoe's of Grand Rapids, a restaurant, has displayed Mr. Kuhlman's portraits of local citizens.

"He had a great love for that river town," his daughter said.

Born Dec. 14, 1927, to Delia and William A. Kuhlman, he attended Grand Rapids High School and served in the Coast Guard on lower New York's Long Island at the end of World War II. He studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where he majored in portraiture and illustration.

He scratch-built large-scale model Coast Guard vessels and designed and made smoking pipes and elaborate wood and metal slingshots.

"When I think of my dad, I think of all his passions and interests," his daughter said. "He was a Renaissance man and was always learning and trying new things."

Surviving are his wife, Trudy, whom he married Oct. 22, 1966; sons, Adam and John Kuhlman; daughters, Linda Hixon and Laura Kuhlman Wegener, and 10 grandchildren.W

There will be no services. Arrangements are by the Peinert-Dunn Funeral Home, Whitehouse.

The family suggests tributes to the Metroparks of the Toledo Area.

Contact Mark Zaborney at: mzaborney@theblade.com or 419-724-6182.