We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of COLE Publishing owner and co-founder Bob Kendall on Saturday, Oct. 4. He was 70.
Kendall and his founding partner, Pete Lawonn, were the visionaries behind what has become the modern wastewater industry. Co-founding the company that started the Pumper magazine in 1979, Kendall created an industry family and culture where none previously existed. He and Lawonn would go on to launch the International Liquid Waste Haulers Equipment & Trade Show (later known as the Pumper & Cleaner Environmental Expo International, and now the WWETT Show).
The establishment of Pumper magazine and the subsequent events raised the standards for decades in the entire liquid waste industry. “I think you’d be hard-pressed to say that Bob didn’t have a vital hand in creating the industry as we know it today,” says Jeff Bruss, COLE Publishing president. “Bob always put people first. I believe that’s what created all the success he had both personally and professionally. Few people who have ever met Bob would forget the experience. He was one of a kind.”
Kendall’s role in the liquid waste industry began with a chance conversation in northern Wisconsin back in 1979, when he and business partner Pete Lawonn, a local septic service operator, were looking for a way to sell Lawonn’s spare vacuum truck. A local vacuum tank manufacturer suggested they needed a trade publication to buy and sell equipment, and Pumper and all that followed were born.
Kendall would tell the story of how the early days working on Pumper entailed late nights of gathering names of septic operators from Yellow Pages ads in phone books and physically pasting up the pages that would become an eight-page black-and-white newspaper mailed to 2,500 contractors in eight Midwest states. The publication soon evolved into a full-fledged national magazine.
Readers embraced Pumper from its launch, which highlighted to Kendall and Lawonn the immediate need for an industry gathering. In 1981 the inaugural International Liquid Waste Haulers show was held at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville and an entire industry now had a community to call its own. Although Lawonn moved on to other ventures in 1986, Kendall continued to cultivate the wastewater show into what would eventually become North America’s largest event for the decentralized wastewater industry.
In 2016 Kendall felt the WWETT Show needed someone who could take it to the next level, and he made the difficult decision to sell that portion of the business. He held onto COLE Publishing because, in his mind, the people were invaluable and he couldn’t let them go. They were his family, just like the industry he helped build.
After nearly 50 years in business, Kendall’s values and vision are still evident in the daily operations at COLE. He will be sorely missed by his family, friends, community and an entire industry that came to know and respect him.
