Akron-Summit County Public Library/Ott Gangl Collection

It comes as a surprise not that Ray Kapper has died but the manner in which he did. Kapper and his body had been in a struggle for years. Body finally won out over will, but what a will it was, one that he relentlessly used for the good of Akron, the city he loved.

The surprise is that Ray Kapper, 83, died in his sleep. I always believed when he made the city run, whether as City Council president or as city service director, that Kapper never took his eye off his city—and everyonewho worked for him and with him knew it.

City workers understood they couldn’t dog it with their birddog of a boss ready to go on point. He could and would show up in unexpected places and at ungodly of times. When the snow flew, Kapper didn’t hunker down in a cozy, warm office. He hit the streets with his plow drivers. When I wrote The Indomitable Don Plusquellic: How a Controversial Mayor Quarterbacked Akron’s Comeback, a political biography, Linda Sowa Phelps told me he seemed to be everywhere at once and taught her that was being service director.

She learned well but she could not replicate—no one could—what made Ray Kapper Ray Kapper. He could be tough, but he also brought a subtlety to the job that Plusquellic’s critics accused him of lacking. While that may have been the one lesson that escaped Plusquellic—it was more a difference in personality and approach, I think—Akron’s longest-serving mayor has Kapper to thank for his teaching and support.

If it were not for the decisions that Kapper made after losing two mayoral campaigns of his own and Tom Sawyer’s foresight and decisiveness in luring Kapper out of his powerful City Council position, Plusquellic’s career might have gone in another direction. So thank or blame Kapper for Plusquellic. He stood aside for him and then stood by him, sage political adviser and the best service director a mayor could have.

After defeating incumbent Roy Ray, Akron’s last Republican mayor, in 1983, Sawyer immediately seized upon his cabinet review committee’s recommendation for service director. By doing so, Sawyer succeeded on two levels: operational and aspirational. Kapper became a service director with unmatched operational skills, the ability to make quick, sure decisions, and the skill to explain them. Ray Kapper, the would-be mayor, fit service director as if it had been preordained. “I had always wanted to provide service,” Kapper said. “That’s what I liked to do.”

His willingness to yield his power in City Council allowed Sawyer to open a door to the Council presidency for Kapper’s protégé, Plusquellic. Though people thought Kapper’s appointment amounted to Sawyer eliminating a potential rival, Sawyer said: “That never had anything to do with it.” The true reason was: “It created a position for Don Plusquellic,” and “it gave a chance for a younger successorship plan.”

Plusquellic had no interest in being mayor, but he was ready to lead City Council. And though Sawyer had no notion that longtime Akron Congressman John Seiberling would retire two years later and encourage him to seek the seat, he did know that if a mayor left office before his term expired, the City Council president would succeed him. When this transpired, it did not take Plusquellic long to recognize that if he could not have, because of injuries, the job he had once seemed destined for—NFL quarterback—running the city that Kapper had taught him as a young councilman wasn’t bad at all.

Though there were disagreements—if you are breathing you will have disagreements with Plusquellic—Plusquellic and Kapper became an unbeatable political team that turned around a city circling the economic drain. Kapper, of course, liked to remind Plusquellic that he also had helped to turn around unsuccessful Kenmore High School football and inspire Plusquellic’s All-State football career by coaching a team with only 50 boys from his “girls school,” St. Mary’s High School, to victory over Kenmore. “It was,” fiery competitor Plusquellic admitted, “a motivator for me.”

Kapper could not only coach a good game but also talk one. Don Ursetti, who became downright famous broadcasting high school football for WAKR, once lured the knowledgeable Kapper onto his broadcasts as color commentator for “about six weeks,” according to an Ursetti Facebook post. “He was great.” Not only did Kapper add spark to the broadcast but he also “brought in sponsors and seemed to be stoked to do the games.” It seemed perfect . . . until Kapper’s beloved Yankees made the post-season.

Doing a game at Walsh Jesuit High School, Kapper’s commentary dwindled to sparse when the Yankees game began. Ursetti had to fill dead air that belonged to Kapper, who seemed to be peering down and not at the field of play. He had brought a “small battery-powered television set with him and was watching the game on a grainy black-and-white screen.” During a break, Ursetti called Kapper on his inattention: “Are you serious?” Ursetti could not help but laugh, and Kapper did, too. . . “sheepishly.”

By the next week, Kapper had decided to “retire” himself from color commentary. It was difficult for him to climb stadium steps and then there was the Yankees in the playoffs. “He thanked me for the chance to do the games,” Ursetti wrote, “but believe me, the pleasure was all mine.”

Kapper, despite a more serious blemish on his record as a public servant that the Akron Beacon Journal, wisely buried in Ray Kapper’s obituary, generated far more satisfaction than grief in how he lived his life and served his city. The Ohio Ethics Commission, nevertheless, found that Kapper had failed to disclose his consulting firm represented companies seeking contracts with the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority and Summit County Children Services Board, on whose boards Kapper served. He was sentenced to five months in jail and five months of house arrest. But, as Doug Livingston noted, “The scandal, which ensnared Kapper in federal mail fraud charges, did little to tarnish his reputation of public service or his influence in local politics.”

Ray Kapper may have suffered from an imperfection or two—liking the Yankees, chief among them—but Akron could never thank him enough to repay him for the life he lived.