Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 6, 1993 TAG: 9306040096
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: PATRICIA HUTSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: PEMBROKE LENGTH: Long
A cheerful man, he reserves the solemn expression and sober attire for funerals.
"I'm a bit of a workaholic," Kendall said, running his fingers through his prematurely gray hair as he relaxed in plaid shirt and work pants.
The owner of Kendall Funeral Home in Pembroke, he also is minister of the Jesus Church in Clendennin, a small Giles County community near Narrows, and owns a combination furniture-hardware store in Pembroke.
Kendall's spirit is younger now than during his youth, he said. As an only child in a family whose members had lived through two wars and the Great Depression, he grew up in an atmosphere of "doom and gloom."
He remembers the "awful, impending sense of urgency" this generated in the mind of an impressionable teen-ager and how he would fervently thank God each night for daily survival.
"I was 15 going on 45," he said of his youth.
When Kendall was growing up in Clendennin, it was dominated by the Pentecostal Church and its flamboyant female minister, "Sister Effie" Gilmer, who became a legend in her time.
Eddie's mother was a member of this church and his grandmother was one of Sister Effie's "lieutenants." The local girl who was to become Mrs. Eddie Kendall was Sister Effie's granddaughter.
Kendall grew up in his grandmother's house and worked at his grandfather's general store while he was still so small he had to stand on a barrel to wait on customers. At 14, he inherited the store from his grandfather and ran it himself.
He looks back on his childhood with gratitude, even though living by the church's dictates meant no indulgence whatever - even simple ones such as candy, gum, movies.
The women could not cut their hair, could wear only dresses, and makeup was strictly forbidden. Eddie credits the church's intolerance of society's ways for his present tolerance of others' beliefs.
Female ministers were rare, and even the powerful Sister Effie, who saw herself as an evangelist and traveled to surrounding states, taught her followers that women were not to hold positions of power in the church.
She deferred important tasks, such as marriages and baptisms, to the men, while she "put legs on her faith" by teaching the mountain people hygiene, canning and quilting. And because modern medicine was shunned by the church, she performed minor faith healing.
To the church, the community was its world; the world outside was its enemy. In retrospect, Kendall says, he must have thought during this time that they "had God chained somewhere between Peters Mountain and the New River."
In this atmosphere - hearing church members nightly "speak in tongues," watching "dancing in the spirit" (the only dance allowed was a flat-foot style of mountain dance), witnessing the "casting out of devils" - it was small wonder that Kendall as a child found school monstrously dull.
His mother was embarrassed in her own Sunday school class when she found that her son was unable to read his lessons. She focused on teaching Eddie the Bible, and by the time he was in the fifth grade, he was reading on a ninth-grade level.
Kendall came to his 14th birthday dreaming of God, having read most of the Bible, fearing he would be lost and afraid his destiny would arrive before he was ready.
On the second Sunday in May 1961, a female prophet of the church came to Eddie during services and led him to the altar, where he knelt and felt his toughness and resistance break as though it was thin ice touched by the sun. He remembers responding with wild emotion, beginning to pray, to confess, to ask forgiveness.
He also remembers Miss Effie's triumphant words: "Praise God, you're going to be my little holy-roller preacher-boy!"
At age 15, he began to accompany Miss Effie on trips to other churches. She allowed him to deliver "sermonettes" ahead of her sermons and sometimes asked him to substitute for her when she was ill, or to take her place at funerals. At 17, Kendall was ordained a minister by the Pentecostal Holiness Church.
Although he was offered scholarships when he finished high school, he bent to the elder church members' beliefs that education was unnecessary and instead went to work at an industry in Blacksburg.
Being thrust out into the "wicked" world was a shock. He recalls an instance of prejudice against his religion that cost him a job. He moved on to a lower-wage job as a laborer at National Gypsum in Narrows.
By now, Kendall was married, the father of one child, and was writing a controversial religious column for the Giles County paper, the Virginian Leader, titled first, "Holiness," and later, "For Crying Out Loud."
Then two Pembroke businessmen who owned a combination furniture-hardware store and a funeral parlor hired Eddie to learn the trades. After they sent him to embalming school, Kendall became a funeral director at age 23.
In 1984, he bought complete interest in the business.
Eddie and Fern Kendall still live in his grandmother's house in Narrows with their youngest daughter, Ashley. Of his two older daughters, Odessa became an artist, sculptor and teacher and is pursuing graduate work at Radford University, and Demetria has graduated from Concord College with a degree in history and political science and is aiming for law school.
Shakespeare tagged the undertakers of his time "dismal dealers," but Kendall figures he simply performs a job for people who find it too difficult to deal with themselves.
As for Kendall, he's at that point in his life where he can say, "It's been good to be alive."
by CNB