Arthur “Bud” Ronald Kudart was a Marine officer, a Cedar Rapids lawyer for 58 years, an author and a Republican state senator from Linn County. He died on September 18, 2026, in Chicago at age 96, according to Stewart Baxter Funeral & Memorial Services.

Kudart's Iowa story ran through classrooms, military service, a neighborhood law practice and the Statehouse. Born on July 27, 1930, he grew up in Mount Vernon and graduated from Mount Vernon High School in 1948. He attended Cornell College before earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa in 1952.

That graduation year also brought a new uniform. Kudart entered the United States Marine Corps officer candidate program during the Korean War, then served on active duty and in the Marine Corps Reserve through 1960. While completing his legal education, he worked on the field staff of United States Representative Fred Schwengel from 1957 to 1958.

Kudart received his law degree from the University of Iowa in 1958. He formed a small firm and practiced with Donald Holmes, his friend and law partner. The family obituary counted his legal career at 58 years, a span far longer than his time in elected office and the professional foundation beneath his public work.

His political involvement included years of local organizing. Kudart was vice president of the Young Republicans of Linn County in 1961, then held county organizational posts over the next three years. In 1972 he published New Republican Politics. Six years later, voters elected him to the Iowa Senate.

The Iowa Legislature records Kudart as Linn County's Republican senator during the 68th and 69th General Assemblies, from 1979 to 1983. In the 69th, he served on the Energy, Judiciary and Natural Resources committees and held the vice chairmanship of Judiciary. His assignments joined the two strands of his working life: law and public policy.

Writing remained another form of civic participation. Kudart produced four books and a number of papers. His family said most addressed what he called “moving Iowa and Cedar Rapids forward,” a phrase that connected his writing to his legal and political work.

Kudart married Patricia “Pat” Brown, a nurse from Dysart, Iowa, on December 12, 1954. They made their home in Cedar Rapids and had two children, Kay and Tom. Pat, who trained as a registered nurse and later taught nursing in the Cedar Rapids area, died at their home in 2016, according to her own obituary from Stewart Baxter Funeral & Memorial Services, after 61 years of marriage. At his death, Kudart was survived by both children and four grandchildren.

Across nearly six decades at the bar, four years in the Iowa Senate and four books, Kudart returned to the civic institutions of eastern Iowa. His work persists in 58 years of legal practice, the legislative record of two General Assemblies, the pages he wrote about Iowa and Cedar Rapids, and the family that carried his story from Cedar Rapids to Chicago.