Dentist early backer of BGSU hockey team
1/27/2005BOWLING GREEN - Dr. William G. Kramer, 81, a dentist and outdoor enthusiast who was an early supporter of hockey at Bowling Green State University, died Tuesday at St. Vincent Mercy Medical Center, Toledo.
He recently was treated for respiratory failure, but family members did not know his cause of death.
Dr. Kramer operated a dental practice in Bowling Green for 45 years, much of the time from an office in the Huntington Bank Building on South Main Street.
Besides his regular patients, he provided occasional dental care to nursing home residents and prisoners at the Wood County jail.
Beginning in the mid 1960s, Dr. Kramer served as the team dentist for the BGSU hockey team.
He and his family housed a Canadian player attending the college for four years to help start the young program.
At hockey games, Dr. Kramer worked quickly to keep players on the ice.
"If players got a tooth knocked out, he would stitch them up until they could get further care, or get them back into the game," Joseph Kramer, his son, said.
Dr. Kramer enjoyed fishing and hunting, especially casting for walleye, sometimes as early as February, on the Maumee River.
"The earlier he could get out meant it was less crowded," his son said. "He enjoyed people but he enjoyed the solitude."
On one outing, he used CPR to revive a fisherman who was pulled unconscious from the river.
Born in Archbold, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He graduated from dental school at Ohio State University in 1953.
Surviving are his wife, Elizabeth; sons, Robert and Joseph, and two grandchildren.
Services will be private. Arrangements By Deck-Hanneman Funeral Home.
The family suggests tributes to a charity of the donor's choice.