Robert L. (Bob) Kendall's Obituary
Robert L. (Bob) Kendall died May 17, 2024, at the E.T. York Hospice Care Center of complications of vascular dementia. He was 93.
Bob was born November 13, 1930, in Smith Center, Kansas, to Bernard Kendall and Thelma Swallow Kendall. He spent his early years on the family farm until the conditions of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression forced the family to immigrate to the Northwest, settling first in Washington State, where his father fought forest fires and picked fruit, and his mother operated a nursery school for migrant families, and then in Hermiston, Oregon.
Bob worked at many jobs from his youth—delivering newspapers, school janitor assistant, bee keeper, ranch hand, sawmill log pond worker—until embarking on a 20-year career as a minister. Returning to graduate school in his late 30’s, he completed a Ph.D. degree at Indiana University and began a second career in higher education, first at Central Missouri State University, where the chapter of the Public Relations Student Society of America (PRSSA) was named in his honor, and then in the University of Florida Journalism College, where he taught Public Relations until his retirement in 1998.
Outside his professions, Bob had many interests, including history--especially Civil War history, ethics and philosophy, nature and science, painting, music, sailing, tractoring, and, especially woodworking and furniture making. He was widely read and never met an idea he didn’t like.
He was married for 20 years to Carolyn McMickle, and that marriage produced two children, David and Kristine. In 1972, he married Judith Ann Borchelt, and they had one son, Elliot.
Bob is survived by his wife, Judith; a sister, Patricia von Essen, Wenatchee, Washington; two sons, David Kendall, Eugene, Oregon, and Elliot Kendall, New Rochelle, New York; a daughter, Kristine Heisler, Eugene, Oregon; four grandchildren, Kristy Sipple, Tia Owen, Morgan Heisler, and Ari Guggenheim Kendall; and two great-grandsons, Aidin and Connor Sipple.
Burial will be in the Prairie Creek Conservation Cemetery. A memorial service will be held at 11am Saturday, May 25, at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville, 4225 NW 34th Street. Expressions of sympathy may be made to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Memory Garden Fund at https://www.uufg.org/give/
or to Haven Hospice at www.beyourhaven.org
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