For decades, Dick Kendall seemed to have a hand in almost everything in Lewiston-Auburn.

Business. Sports. Law. Youth issues. Charity.

At 88, just before retirement, he was still chairman of four community boards. He had founded eight different groups. He was a mentor, a proud family man, a kind of community ambassador with a wide smile and a memory for names. 

And he was beloved.

“The man was just a pillar of our community,” said Chip Morrison, president of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce. “I feel privileged to have known him.”

Kendall died Saturday after a battle with bone cancer. He was 90 years old.

“His selfless investment of time, energy and funds in others has paid dividends far beyond his initial investment,” said Kendall’s son, Tom, in an email. “Our family, our community and our society are better for him having shared his life with us.”

Raised in Augusta, Kendall graduated in 1941 from Cony High School. He married his high school sweetheart, Mary Briggs, and the relationship seemed fated to succeed. A 1941 Cony yearbook prophesied the couple would wed and have six boys. They did. (And then two girls.)

When Kendall began working for Bates Manufacturing, the growing family moved to Auburn. They settled at Brookside Farm, which remains the Kendall family home.

Kendall later worked as director of personnel for Union Mutual Life Insurance Co., then started his own business specializing in the manufacturing and printing accounting forms. Maine Ventures, doing business as Veribest Systems, grew to 64 employees and a plant on Merrow Road.

“Once he saw you, he could greet you three months later and know your name. Just come up to you, just friendly, (and ask), ‘How are you? How are your kids. How’s your family?'” said Linc Hayes, who grew up with Kendall’s children and now co-owns Lost Valley. “I call him a gentleman. He was a gentleman in business, he was a gentleman in every walk of life.”

Business was important to Kendall, but family and community took precedence.

“He went out of his way to help people. Always, always, always,” Morrison said.

Over the decades Kendall volunteered for a collection of organizations, boards and charities, including the chamber, United Way, Auburn-Lewiston YMCA, Central Maine SCORE and the Maine Community Foundation’s Androscoggin County Committee. He stayed with many of them for years, some for decades.

“He always made himself available,” said YMCA interim director Jim Lawler, who has served the YMCA for 29 years but still considered Kendall a mentor. “He was very much a people-oriented person.”

A lover of skiing, Kendall also served as president of the Maine Alpine Racing Association, president of the Auburn Ski Association and first director of the Lost Valley Ski School in Auburn.

Although Kendall only won one ski race — at age 72 — he passed his love of skiing on. All eight of his children were members of competitive ski teams and four became national champions.

He’d visited Lost Valley just this past winter.

“We love him and we’re going to totally miss him,” said Lost Valley co-owner Connie King. “He was an important part of Lost Valley and he will be sadly missed.”

In 2002, Kendall found another passion: the Lewiston-Auburn Youth Court.

That program seeks to give young criminals with minor offenses a chance to avoid real court while still getting them to take responsibility for their crimes. Kendall, who’d read about the success of youth courts across the country, pushed for its creation in Lewiston-Auburn.

The court has been active now for more than a decade.

“The Youth Court, he felt, gave the best opportunity for juveniles that had made minor bad choices to be ‘redeemed’ through this process by their peers,” wrote his son, John, in an email. “To his dying days he hoped this program would spread statewide. He realized that it would need another champion . . . so others must rise up to this responsibility in his absence.”

Over the years, Kendall has won a host of awards and honors for his work in the community, including Auburn Citizen of the Year in 1986 and the YMCA’s Distinguished Service Award in 2012. He and his wife were also inducted into the Maine Ski Hall of Fame in 2005.

“He’s left his mark,” Hayes said.

There will be no funeral service, per Kendall’s wishes. In lieu of flowers, his family said in his obituary, Kendall’s “wish is for all to become involved in your community and add to the fabric of our society.”

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