Bernard “Bud” LaLonde, professor emeritus at Fisher College of Business and a recognized thought leader in logistics and supply chain management, passed away on December 1. He was 84.

LaLonde joined The Ohio State University in 1969 and helped establish the College of Business as a destination for generations of supply chain students and scholars. He authored more than 120 articles and books and chaired more than 60 doctoral dissertations while in higher education. A review of 50 years of PhD graduates of the Fisher Marketing Department (now Marketing and Logistics) reveals four individuals with more than 20,000 Google Scholar citations; LaLonde served as the dissertation chair for each one.

“In academia, it is very easy to be good, but next to impossible to be great,” said Douglas Lambert, the Raymond E. Mason Chair in Transportation and Logistics at Fisher, a former PhD student of LaLonde and a friend.

“Bud LaLonde was great.”

While at Ohio State, LaLonde served as the founding editor of the Journal of Business Logistics in 1978, which he later gave to the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP). More than 30 years later, Fisher’s Thomas Goldsby, chair of the Department of Marketing and Logistics, and Walter Zinn, associate dean for graduate students programs and professor of logistics, were named co-editors — the first from Ohio State since LaLonde.

“Bud’s contributions to our college, our department and the entire field of supply chain and logistics are immeasurable,” Goldsby said. “I often refer to Fisher’s logistics program as ‘the house that Bud built.’ With Bud’s passing, we’ve lost a dear friend, colleague and an icon in our field.”

LaLonde was the 1989 recipient of the college’s Faculty Service Pace Setter Award and the Eccles Medal from the Society of Logistics Engineers. In 1975, Marketing News identified him as one of the leaders in Marketing Thought, and in 1995, he was named the Columbus chapter of the American Marketing Association’s “Marketing Man of the Year.”

A longtime member of the CSCMP, LaLonde was honored with the organization’s Distinguished Service Award in 1976. In 1978, the CSCMP created the Bernard J. LaLonde Best Paper Award to recognize the most valuable paper presented annually in the Journal of Business Logistics.

Further cementing his legacy and commitment to the next generation of supply chain leaders at Fisher, the Bernard J. LaLonde Transportation and Logistics Scholarship Fund was created by friends and business partners to honor his academic service. Since its inception, the fund has provided more than 70 undergraduate students with access to transportation and logistics education.