Nell Kendrick
For Zonta Club President, philanthropist, business professional, and health advocate, Nell Kendrick, passed at the age of 81 on Friday, March 6 due to heart failure.
Kendrick was an active advocate health in Milwaukee for decades.
At Blue Cross and Blue Shield, she worked as an administrator she spread awareness of sickle cell anemia. She would eventually be awarded for her work with sickle cell anemia. IN addition, she worked with the Jewish Vocational Center.
She opened several methadone clinics to help those afflicted by drug addiction. She and her brother, Dr. William Marshall, ran the clinics together: one on 27th and Atkinson, another on 35th and Cleveland.
Marshall is the founder of the California Institute of Health and Human Services, Inc. Like his sister, he is familiar with business and management as well as public health.
The two grew up in Beloit, Wisc.,
Rueben Harpole was a friend of Kendrick’s. She and Harpole’s wife were both sisters of the Eta Phi Beta sorority. He says Kendrick’s relationship with her brother, better known as “Little Bill” was fond.
Their father Dr. William H. Marshall lived in South Carolina and worked as a sharecropper. He later gave up sharecropping to take up an education. He pursued a medical degree and became a doctor. Eventually, he would practice medicine in Beloit as one of the first African American doctors in the area.
“Nell really surprised me,” said Harpole. He recalls Kendrick winning Boston Store’s Woman of the Year Award for her work within the community. She could even sing and play the piano, a talent she liked to share with Milwaukee’s youth.
She directed musicals starring reformed members of Chicago’s Black Peace Stone gang.
As president of the Zonta Club of Milwaukee, Kendrick traveled and spoke on behalf of the organization, involved students in their communities, addressed health and violence, and raised awareness of poverty.
Zonta Club is an international society that brings together women with professional background to create opportunities for women, offer resources like scholarships, and aid the end of violence against women.
Kendrick was an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as well as Marquette University.
She and her husband, George Kendrick, have traveled the world together. They eventually settled in the Virgin Islands. Kendrick returned to Wisconsin as her health declined. She passed in Milwaukee.
Kendrick is survived by her husband and brother.
Her memory lives on in the hearts of those she touched with her boundless love, empathy, and compassion.
A visitation will take place on Saturday, March 14 between 9 and 11 a.m. Afterwards, a funeral at Chapel of the Chimes located in Wisconsin Memorial Park, at 13235 W. Capitol Drive, Brookfield.