John King Fauver, a retired business executive who was president of the former White Tower restaurant chain, died April 16 in his home in Perrysburg. He was 87.
He was diagnosed with Ataxia, a neurological disorder, about 25 years ago, said his daughter Betsy Stueber.
Mr. Fauver, who liked to be called Skip, was operations president of the White Tower restaurants in Toledo and Dayton from 1971 to the early 1990s. He succeeded Barney Kniep, who was with the company from 1934 to 1979.
The eateries, which became known for their signature ButterBurger, grew out of the national White Tower organization that was started by the family of Mr. Fauver’s wife in Milwaukee in the 1920s.
Marketed to customers as “your oasis in the night” because of its 24-hour operation, White Tower began locally at 10th and Jefferson Avenue in 1929.
The 15-by-18-foot one-story building was built with white glazed brick in old English castle style design that included a roof turret with stained glass windows in it.
A second stand-alone building in the same white, tower design opened the following year at Jackson and Huron streets. The chain would eventually open three additional locations. The buildings dropped the English architecture in favor of Art Deco.
The Toledo and Dayton operations got their start through J. Clement Lamb, a son-in-law of the founder of White Tower, John E. Saxe, and father of Mr. Saxe’s granddaughter, Eugenie Lamb Fauver. She married Mr. Fauver on July 12, 1952. She died April 3, 2014.
Mrs. Stueber said her father oversaw the chain’s expansion outside downtown Toledo with the construction of new restaurants on Monroe Street in the Colony, Airport Highway, and Alexis Road.
Mr. Fauver was born Dec. 7, 1928, to Annie and King Earle Fauver in Elyria, Ohio, where his father was a lawyer. He graduated from Deerfield Academy and Dartmouth College, where he belonged to Phi Kappa Psi and was in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.
He entered the U.S. Navy as a lieutenant during the Korean War and served aboard the destroyer USS Charles P. Cecil and USS Eldorado. After the service, he attended Harvard Business School, graduating in 1955.
He met the former Eugenie Lamb, who was a student at Smith College, while he was a student at Dartmouth.
Mr. Fauver had positions at companies in Andover, Mass., and Cincinnati before joining White Tower in 1971.
Surviving are his daughters, Betsy Stueber, Ellen Reimer, and Mary Lee Bahr; sons, Chip and Scott Fauver; brothers, Scribner and Benjamin Fauver; sister Lee Merrill, and 14 grandchildren.
A celebration of life will be held at 4 p.m. May 15 in Carranor Hunt and Polo Club in Perrysburg.
Tributes are suggested to the Fauver Family Ataxia Research Fund at the University of Michigan.
First Published April 26, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
