AUBURN — Dick Kendall is the chairman of four boards, the founder of eight different groups and ready to ease into retirement.

It’s none too soon. He turned 88 Friday.

In 1958, Kendall was an Auburn Sewer District trustee. In 1969, president of the Maine Alpine Racing Association. In 2001, founder of the L/A Youth Court. All around those decades and dates: a swirl of memberships, business starts and volunteer work spanning the Twin Cities.

“As time went by, one would get replaced by another,” Kendall said. He recently stepped back from Youth Court and the Maine Community Foundation’s Androscoggin County Committee.

“My cycle with the YMCA ends next year,” he said. “I was its first two-term president.”

Kendall grew up in Augusta and graduated from Cony High School in 1941. The yearbook prophecy that year said Kendall and girlfriend Mary Briggs would wed and have six boys. They did. The couple added two girls after they moved to Auburn for his work with Bates Manufacturing.

The family settled at Brookside Farm, where they still live.

“It was a wonderful place for the kids to grow up,” Kendall said. Children weeded the garden and tended livestock, paid so much an hour or an egg. “I was up in Houlton when our bull got out on Court Street.”

He was director of personnel for Union Mutual Life Insurance Co. in 1960 when Kendall said he wrestled with, “‘How can we avoid moving to Portland?’ So I started my business.”

That company: Maine Ventures, doing business as Veribest Systems. Its specialty: Manufacturing and printing accounting forms. It grew to 64 employees and a plant on Merrow Road.

He’d been inspired, he said, when a friend showed him what was then a novel bookkeeping system: carbon strips on the back of checks.

“He said, ‘Dick, this is the neatest thing. I write my check, it copies right through,’” Kendall said. “I did those by the millions, sold in 38 states.”

Seven of his eight children worked for Veribest, and over the years family has clearly loomed large. He’s still chairman of the board for Chipco International and the Robert C. Kendall Science Center, which his children have a hand in.

“We have six national champions in the family in skiing. I can take a little credit for that; we got them started,” he said. “The only race I ever won was when I was 72 years old — right at Lost Valley where I knew the hill perfectly. I won for the men in my age group, beat my son-in-law.”

Last winter was his first without skiing. He and Mary love dancing, but they’ve also cut back. In 1980 they won a dance contest, a little ballroom, a little disco, among ski officials at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. “Some of the younger people were a little annoyed we were doing so well,” Kendall said.

They have 21 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. All keep in touch through a monthly newsletter that takes him 20 hours to assemble.

These days, “I’m really giving myself a bit of a rest,” Kendall said. “I’m not as keen at getting up at 6:30, 6 to make the early morning meetings as I used to be.”

Know someone active in the community? Contact staff writer Kathryn Skelton at 689-2844 or [email protected]