John Raymond "Ray" Gaeng, a retired advertising executive who gained fame in the late 1980s as a Ford pitchman, died July 18 from complications of Alzheimer's disease at his Bel Air home. He was 81.
Mr. Gaeng, the son of a Baltimore police sergeant and a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised on Normal Avenue.
After graduating in 1946 from Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington, he studied acting on a scholarship at the Studio of Dramatic Arts at the New York School of the Theater in New York City.
After returning to Baltimore, he won a local talent competition and appeared in a vaudeville act for a week at the Hippodrome Theatre, family members said. He also appeared in drama productions at the Johns Hopkins Playshop.
"I've got to tell you, my husband was a gentle man but he certainly loved an audience," said his wife of 55 years, the former Frances deSales Kelly.
After serving four years in the Army, he returned to Baltimore and earned a bachelor's degree in English in 1955 from Loyola College, where he had been active in the drama society and the Jesuit honor fraternity and was a staff writer for the Greyhound, the college newspaper.
Mr. Gaeng, who was known as Ray, went to work in advertising after leaving college.
In 1971, he joined W.B. Doner & Co., the Detroit-based advertising agency, which is the largest independently owned advertising agency in North America. There he worked on the old National Brewing Co., Hess Shoes and Orioles accounts.
"My dad worked at W.B. Doner for over 20 years as an account executive, working with the Orioles and Cal Ripken on different campaigns, as well as the Ford Motor Co.," said a daughter, Theresa G. D'Auria of Hillsborough, N.J.
"As a stand-in for an actor during filming, he was eventually asked to play the part of the 'Ford Man' locally in Baltimore and Washington," Ms. D'Auria said. "We played a series of commercials at his viewing last week, and I was happy to see how many people remembered him for that."
How Mr. Gaeng came to star in the ads was something of a happenstance.
In 1988, he and several other advertising colleagues were trying to pitch an ad campaign to Baltimore-Washington Ford dealers. While working on the storyboards and writing ad copy, one of his associates asked him to pose for a Polaroid snapshot.
It was Mr. Gaeng's visage, who was simply fulfilling the role of understudy until an actual actor could be found, that caught the attention of the Washington Ford dealers. They wanted Mr. Gaeng and no one else to appear in the ads.
The first ad featuring Mr. Gaeng urging the public to consider a new Ford made its debut in June 1988, with full-page ads in The Sun and Washington Post, and took to the air later that year.
In explaining his sudden transformation from backroom ad executive to newspaper and TV celebrity, Mr. Gaeng was quite modest.
"You can use acting experience in advertising," he told The Sun in the 1991 interview. "You use a lot of the elements of acting in presentations to clients."
The ads that appeared for two years both in print and in the Baltimore-Washington market, with an estimated TV audience of 6 million, featured Mr. Gaeng dressed in a dark suit with a devilish grin on his face, clutching a fistful of crisp $100 bills.
Mr. Gaeng said that his newfound celebrity had people on the street or in stores and restaurants telling him that he looked "just like that guy on TV who gives out money."
"Ray was with me for a long time," recalled veteran Baltimore ad man Herbert Fried, who established the Doner office in Baltimore in 1955 and later rose to become the company's CEO and chairman, and is now associated with Nevins and Associates, a Hunt Valley advertising and marketing firm.
"He was charming and always a gentleman. He was a great ad man," he said. "He was a very sharp guy and represented the Ford dealers quite well."
After leaving Doner in 1991, Mr. Gaeng established his own agency, Gaeng & Gang Advertising and Marketing Consultants in Bel Air.
"There were two things that I wanted to accomplish," Mr. Gaeng explained to The Sun in 1991 of his decision to leave his longtime agency and start one of his own. "I wanted to see if there was life after Doner, and if there was life after Ford."
Some of Mr. Gaeng's numerous clients included the Orioles and the Mid-Atlantic Milk Marketing Association, as well as civic and religious organizations.
As publicist for the milk marketing association, Mr. Gaeng worked closely on the organization's marketing campaigns that featured spokesman Cal Ripken Jr. drinking a glass of milk.
Mr. Gaeng was an avid tennis player and an active Loyola College alumnus, who for years was master of ceremonies at "Mr. Loyola Night."
For the past eight years, Mr. Gaeng had battled Alzheimer's disease, family members said.
He had been an active communicant for 45 years of St. Margaret Roman Catholic Church in Bel Air, where a Mass of Christian burial was offered July 22.
In addition to his wife and daughter, survivors include three sons, Brian Gaeng of Frederick, Christopher Gaeng of Bel Air and Brendan Gaeng of Crofton; another daughter, Kimberly McBryan of Wynnewood, Pa.; 23 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.