H. Alan Rudolph; 1933-2014: Marketing ace honed skills on tennis court

5/31/2014

H. Alan Rudolph, a former Owens Corning and Toledo Edison vice president who was a tennis devotee, died May 24 in Hospice of Northwest Ohio, Perrysburg Township. He was 80.

He had heart problems, his son Eric said.

Mr. Rudolph of Springfield Township retired in 1998 from a marketing and sales agency he’d formed a decade earlier that focused on building and construction material products.

The longtime Ottawa Hills resident began his OC career in sales, starting in Toledo. After assignments in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Boston, he and his family returned home. In 1969, Mr. Rudolph was appointed a manager of wholesale-dealer marketing in its home-building products division.

Mr. Rudolph became general manager of the appliance and transportation insulation material marketing division in 1976, and two years later he was named an OC vice president of the division. He was a former director of the National Home Improvement Council.

He went to Toledo Edison Co. in 1984 as marketing director with the charge of overseeing analysis and preparation of marketing plans and identifying competitive market factors, business conditions, and sales trends. He was appointed Edison’s vice president of marketing in 1986.

“He had a very good sense of humor and was a good communicator and was a very clear thinker and was able to project a plan and follow it,” his son said.

He taught marketing and sales at the University of Toledo and was a volunteer arbitrator for the Better Business Bureau.

He learned tennis as a summer employee of the Toledo Tennis Club in Ottawa Hills while attending DeVilbiss High School in Toledo. For decades, he played several times a week, indoors and out, at Toledo Tennis Club and at Laurel Hills Swim and Tennis Club. He liked the sport, his son said, “and seeing a good group of friends.”

The son of Lillian and Harold W. Rudolph, he was a 1955 graduate of Denison University and, after Naval officer candidate school, was commissioned an ensign in the Navy.

He and his wife, Nancy, often traveled the world. She was a longtime Toledo Museum of Art volunteer, and before each trip she researched the art and architecture of their destination. “He’d talk about how he’d land and he’d always be three steps deeper into the experience,” son Eric said.

He and his wife married on June 9, 1956. She died on March 20, 2001.

Surviving are his sons, Eric and Kirk; daughter, Karin Rudolph, and seven grandchildren.

Services will be private.

The family suggests tributes to St. Michael’s in the Hills Episcopal Church in Ottawa Hills, where he was a member, or the Toledo Museum of Art.

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