Interview with Dr. Ed Kendrick: A Kansas City Dentist and Business Leader

Kansas City dentist and business leader Dr. Ed Kendrick's accomplishments include being published in the professional journal "Diabetic Microvascular Complications Today." The article detailed similarities between gum disease and other blood vessel problems. He has served five years on the Missouri Department of Health advisory board and also created the program BOCA, or Bringing Health Care to Allies, which was created to educate other health care professionals in dental health matters. Kendrick is also the former president of the Greater Kansas City Dental Society.

His lobby is adorned with five nature photographs, close-up views of colorful flowers and butterflies. The photographs add ambiance to the typically stark white walls of a lobby in a doctor's office. A young, quiet Asian customer waits for her appointment time, flipping through People magazine as the minutes tick on. Kendrick's dental office at 4605 Independence Avenue in Kansas City doesn't look like the customary dental office, but behind the colorful photography and diverse clientele is a dentist who says he was born into the profession.

"My dad started the dental practice in 1952, before I was born," says Kendrick, leaning back in the office chair during his lunch hour. "I graduated from UMKC a year early, after my junior year. I was second in a class of 160. This was a great privilege. You could say I was destined to be a dentist."

The influx of immigrants into the Kansas City area has certainly added diversity to Kendrick's client list over the years, like many other area businesses in the Northeast neighborhood of Kansas City. However, unlike some citizens who attribute crime in the Northeast area to the increasing immigrant population, this local business leader has welcomed the diversity with open arms.

"I speak a lot of Spanish," he says. "I have Spanish-speaking staff members. I love the diversity in Kansas City; I love the food. Cultural diversity is part of what makes the richness of the world.

"Also, the Northeast doesn't have a big crime problem, as I understand it," he points out. "There have been cycles of prostitution and drug dealing, which peaked as I saw it in 2001. But police patrolling has had positive effects on the visual prostitution."

Kendrick has certainly done his part to help control the common prostitution and drug dealing problems that have plagued the Northeast area in recent years. In the summer of 2002, he helped to sponsor a community meeting on a tour bus about these two issues. The tour bus traveled up and down Independence and St. John Avenues (the areas that garner the most crime) twice. During this bus tour, Kendrick and other community members hand-delivered invitations to prostitutes and drug dealers, asking them to leave the neighborhood. One might automatically question the safety of such a "community meeting," but Kansas City police officers accompanied the community members both on and off the bus, and were present during the delivery of the invitations.

"If I know of a drug house, I turn them in," he says. "If I see a prostitute, I ask them to leave; I take pictures and I turn them in. If just 200 people did this in the Northeast, what would happen to our neighborhood? I'm willing to do that. We live in a world where the media controls our thinking and our leaders keep us in fear, which allows problems to persist. It's worth any risk that may come from liberating us from fear, even within our own neighborhood."

In addition to his 30-plus years of dentistry in the 100-year-old building on Independence Avenue and his involvement in community crime and safety issues, Kendrick has a background in creative and news photography. He became a freelance staff photographer for the Independence Examiner and Kansas City Kansan at the age of 17.

"I took a course with the Star in photography and hung out with a Life Magazine photographer for three weeks in 1967," Kendrick says. "That life of a photographer appealed to me. I was named outstanding high school photographer by the Star and the trophy from that award became my credentials for photography jobs. I have photographed over 350 weddings, and for fun, I enjoy nature and underwater photography."

His love of photography has taken him all over the world, allowing him the opportunity to photograph many different nature scenes.

"Hanging out with that photographer for three weeks taught me a lot about cleaning photography equipment, storing the film, shutter speed," he says. "I had a lot of incentive to continue learning. Some of my best shots have come from the Caribbean and other places like Micronesia and New Guinea. I try to take two dive trips per year."

Kendrick has also traveled to Cozumel, Belize and Honduras. Most of the best trips, he says, were "livaboards," in which you eat, sleep and dive on the boat.

Beyond traveling, photography, practicing dentistry and his roles in various community and business organizations, Kendrick has interests in religious studies and physics, all related, he says, to his pursuit of truth.

"I've been fascinated mostly with religious studies, and then, the science of being (physics)," he says, "the connection between physical reality and the spirit. I'm a member of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Kansas City, same as Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Jefferson and Ralph Waldo Emerson were. Nobody has a hold on what is truth; if you want to get close to the divine, you have to look within yourself."

The Unitarian Universalist Church, located at 4501 Walnut, is a nondenominational church in Kansas City with a varied congregation consisting of Buddhists, Christians, pagans and atheists, to name a few. According to its website, as part of a national movement and community, the Unitarian Universalist Church welcomes varied beliefs and people, and in 1996 affirmed same-sex marriage. See http://www.allsoulskc.org/ for more information.

With a wide range of interests and an accomplished dental career, how does Kendrick see the future of the Northeast neighborhood?

"I'm looking forward to the non-judgment day," he says, "when we give up feeling like we have to judge one another. Judgment has become a trap.

"Most of us are trying hard to do our best," he continues. "I see that especially in the Northeast. People are most real when they speak their mind, when they don't feel like they have to put on airs. I see a lot of that around here."