When I asked him why ... he said, 'I want to make a difference. I'm a Marine.' For me, there were no more questions. I understood. As a Marine, you feel your time is never over.
Silver Lake
Kendall was 18 when he joined the Corps in 1966. Born and raised in Rock Island, Illinois, he grew up in the poor section of town, where no one he knew went to college. The military was his way out of a future in a factory manufacturing tractor parts. Riding around one day with friends, he spotted a large "Join the Marines" poster and decided to talk to a recruiter. Seven months later, Kendall was sent to Vietnam. His parting with his own dad still chokes him up in the retelling. "That was the first time I ever saw my father cry," he says.
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Working with KC-130 aircraft in the First Marine Aircraft Wing in Vietnam, Kendall moved ammunition and supplies into and the wounded out of combat zones. "When you sweat, sleep, get scared, get mad and cry together, you find out what you're really made of," he said at a 2003 gathering of Marines. His toughest task was loading the body bags of KIAs, some of whom he knew, onto the planes. To this day, he is repelled by the smell of wintergreen, which reminds him of a substance used in disinfectant to plug wounds. "I saw a lot of death," Kendall says. "You don't ever get used to it, but you learn to cope with it."
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After returning to Illinois in 1968, Kendall met and married Sherma Meek, who caught his eye in a restaurant when he was out with someone else. By the time Chris was born two years later, Kendall, once a talented high school clarinet player, had enrolled in the music education program at Topeka's Washburn University, courtesy of the GI Bill. He soon joined his local Marine Reserve unit, training one weekend a month and two weeks in summer at bases across the country. "I love being around Marines," Kendall says simply. "Always have, always will."
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In 1977, Kendall was hired to teach music and help coach at the high school in Silver Lake, a town too tiny for a stoplight, just north of Topeka. "It was like moving to Mayberry R.F.D.," says Kendall. "People leave their doors unlocked. We love it here." Sherma took a job teaching at the elementary level, and the Phelpses settled into a brick and vinyl-sided house with a huge silver maple out front, just across the street from both schools. The arrangement allowed the two of them to walk to work and guaranteed that the home teemed with friends of their kids. "We even put a phone in the garage so boys could call their parents to pick them up after football practice," says Sherma.
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Chris can't remember a time when he did not want to be a Marine. "It began around age two," he says. "I wanted to be like my dad, who was the greatest dad in the world." The two were active partners in Boy Scouts; when Chris rose to Eagle Scout, he asked his father to give the speech at his Court of Honor. Kendall guided his son in track to a high jump record that stood for more than a decade until Chris's younger brother Josh broke it.
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