1923 – 2013

AUBURN — Richard Goodwin Kendall, 90, died Saturday, Aug. 10, at home.

He was born to Clara Goodwin and Maxwell Kendall on July 22, 1923. Dick graduated from Cony High School in Augusta where he met his first love and wife, Mary Elizabeth Briggs. His college education was interrupted with military service in the Army Air Corps, where he served in France during World War II. Dick was a romantic and Paris was his favorite city. He returned to the city of light later in life to find the “petit chateau” where he was housed during the war years. Upon his return to this country, he earned his degree from Dartmouth College, Class of 1945.

Dick began his business career with Bates Manufacturing Co., and assumed responsibilities for labor relations in Augusta and personnel in the Lewiston division. He left to work for Union Mutual Insurance in Portland and soon started his own company, Veribest Systems. He had extraordinary courage and skill to be in business for himself, while providing for his wife and eight children. The business operated for more than 30 years, beginning in his home as a sole proprietor, and growing to employ 64 people in Maine and 12 at a division in Boulder, Colo. It employed six of his own eight children at varying times and developed a national dealer network for his products.

His civic involvement spanned local, state and national organizations. He was a delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business in 1980 and 1986, and served as a volunteer in the 1980 and 2002 winter Olympics. He ran unsuccessfully for the Maine Senate, pedaling his bike door-to-door campaigning and served as a delegate to the Maine State Republican Convention numerous times. He was president of the State of Maine Personnel Board, president of the Maine Alpine Racing Association, president of the Androscoggin County United Way, president of Auburn Ski Association and founder and director of Lost Valley Ski School. He was director and two-term president of the YMCA Board of Directors and during his term served as capital campaign chair. He was chair of the local chapter of SCORE, a national service corps of retired executives, and founder and president of Maine’s first Youth Court.

He received numerous awards for his longtime community involvement, most notably being named Auburn’s Citizen of the Year in 1986.

His legacy includes the strength of his example as a very welcoming man of great integrity, fairness, discipline, compassion, civic commitment and love of family. He had a special fondness for landscapes, especially rural ones, and when he was not traveling the back roads of Maine, he collected those pastoral scenes in a scrapbook. In his later years, he continued to keep cows at his farm, for companionship and the view.

He leaves behind his wife, Mary Briggs Kendall; sister, Frances Moon of Peabody, Mass.; his children, William Kendall and his wife, Nancy, of Naples, Fla., Robert Kendall (deceased) and his widow, Suzanne, of Louisville, Colo., John Kendall and his wife, Sherman, of Falmouth, Thomas Kendall and his wife, Nancy, of Auburn, Kim Kendall of Louisville, Colo., Stephen Kendall and his wife, Debbie, of Superior, Colo., Anne White and her husband, John, of Auburn, and Mary Brown and her husband, Scott, of Hanover, N.H.; and his 21 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren who have all been the longtime beneficiaries of the magical Brookside Farm for 60 years. Having no regrets, he passed with great gratitude for his many blessings in his 90 years and a long life lived to the fullest.