CLAREMONT — Lou Gendron was a bundle of nerves as he sat quietly in a small room at the Earl Bourdon Centre. Outside in the courtyard, a media horde had gathered and a crowd that would reach about 250 was anxiously waiting for the introduction from Gendron.
Alone with Gendron on that June afternoon almost 30 years ago was the man he was about to introduce: President Bill Clinton.
“They had a nice moment together before coming out and my dad introducing the president,” said Louis Gendron, the youngest of Lou and his wife Wreatha’s five children. “He was really nervous and the president was calming him down.”
The introduction went without a hitch at the June 11, 1995 historic meeting between Clinton and the Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, hastily arranged by Gendron.
“When he got the president to come to Claremont, I think he was really proud of that,” Louis said.
Years later, Gendron had a historic marker titled “The Handshake” placed at the entrance of the Bourdon Centre. It referred to when Clinton and Gingrich, at the urging of an attendee, shook hands on the promise to form a bipartisan commission on campaign finance reform.
Meeting Clinton was one of a handful of interesting encounters that Gendron, who died Aug. 14, 2022, at the age of 90, would have over the course of a lifetime that included a diversity of interests and accomplishments ranging from master gardener, tree surgeon and landscape architect to salesman and advocate for seniors. While selling cars he restored a ‘64 Porsche Coupe and got into car racing. An accomplished percussionist and drummer and devoted fan of guitarist Carlos Santana, Gendron would invite musicians over to his house for impromptu playing.
“My dad was a kind of Renaissance man,” Louis said. “He did a lot of different things and knew a lot about different things.”
Gendron was recognized often for his advocacy on behalf of seniors, something he carried on from his father, Remi Louis Gendron. He served as president of the Congress of Claremont Senior Citizens and on several other organizations including as director of the Senior Citizens Housing Development Corp., Southwestern Community Services and the New Hampshire Association for the Elderly.
“My grandfather was heavily involved in the same thing and it was interesting to see my dad take on that role,” Louis said. “He grew into it.”
Daughter Lorene Gendron, of North Springfield, Vt., said she followed her father’s example by going into long term care, social work and joining the Vermont Medical Reserve Corps.
Gendron was one of the first people that Ken Stone, the maintenance supervisor at the Bourdon Centre, met when he started his job in 2006.
“He shared that he was very much interested in helping seniors,” Stone said. “That was a goal of his.”
Stone said Gendron was a big part of the Meals on Wheels program and one of his last efforts was to secure money for another paved parking lot for Bourdon Centre visitors, which took longer than expected.
“Lou was a very determined person and very persistent,” said Stone.
Small in stature with a quiet disposition — daughter Lea Gendron-Rapp remembers a sign at the dinner table where the large family gathered that read, “Lou’s turn to talk” — Gendron spoke volumes with his lifelong devotion to family, friends and community.
“He was a lovely human being, very special,” said his longtime friend and fellow 1949 Stevens graduate, Robert Bowles. “He may have been small in stature but he was big in everything else.”
Enduring friendships and relationships were a hallmark of Gendron’s life, say those who knew him. And it did not matter whether those friends were well-known people like author J.D Salinger, actor Charles Bronson, American painter Ivan Albright, or hundreds of others he came to know.
“He valued people for who they were,” said Gendron-Rapp, of Barnet, Vt., who remembers more than anything her father’s everlasting kindness and love for his wife, Wreatha, who died in 2011. “He just never said anything bad about her and that keeps coming back to me.”
“I think a key thing in his relationship with people was longevity.” said Louis, of Wilton, N.H. “He took a lot of pride in maintaining long-lasting friendships whether in business or not. He always thought about people and would go the extra mile to help out, be sure everyone was okay.”
Gendron was born in 1931 and raised in Claremont and, except for a brief stint in the Navy when he was stationed on Adak Island at the western end of the Aleutian Islands chain, he lived his whole life in his hometown.
“He would never talk about it,” the oldest, Lawrence, said about his father’s time in the Navy. “All he told us was he was intercepting transmissions from Russian fishing trawlers, translating them and sending them on.”
Upon his honorable discharge, Gendron returned home and married Wreatha Zerba in 1952. “He began working by helping his father in landscaping and horticulture,” Lawrence said.
Before taking your son or daughter to work became a trend, the Gendron children often joined their father on the job and true to his character, he taught by example not words.
Lorene, the third child (daughter Lynn passed away in 2017 at age 62 from cancer) said of the many lessons she learned from her father, doing, not talking and helping community and family were the most important.
“They didn’t talk about what they did, they just showed me,” Lorene said of her father and grandfather. “They didn’t talk about what they achieved, they just did them. That is the biggest lesson I took from him.”
Lawrence learned a lot about trees on the work trips with his father.
“As a young boy I spent a good amount of time with him and my grandfather at the various properties that they worked on,” said Lawrence, who is now an artist in New York City. “He could identify any tree, and knew all of the Latin names for them. Both he and my grandfather taught by example. He wasn’t the overly talkative type — quite the opposite. But he did pass along what he learned by doing.”
Lawrence remembers watching him and his grandfather save one of several large oak trees at the Maxfield Parrish home in Cornish.
“He carved out the decay, sealed the inside with a tar substance then put in rebar that looked like a ladder before filling it with cement,” Lawrence said. “He did the same thing at Saint-Gaudens.”
Gendron-Rapp also enjoyed going to work with her father
“Some of my fondest memories are when I was a little girl and going with him,” said Gendron-Rapp. “I just enjoyed the outside and seeing him doing what he loved. Those are the memories that really stand out for me; the garden, the trees, his happy place. He loved sharing that with people. To this day I love many of the same things.”
Lorene said her father took pride in the fact his work in the natural world had an enduring quality.
“I remember planting two trees down on lower Elm Street with him,” said Lorene. “I used to always drive by and see them getting bigger. That was part of his love of what he did, there was always something to show for it.”
Gendron’s parenting style, said his children, was firm but flexible, giving his children room to grow but tugging on the reins when necessary.
“He gave us room to do what we wanted to do, within reason, and stepping in when he had to help us out,” Lawrence said.
Gendron would eventually move on from the landscaping business but remained a gardener at heart with the family plot boasting a marvelous array of vegetables.
From the landscaping business, Gendron went on to sell cars at Al Alden’s Audi and Porsche dealership in White River Junction and later in Claremont.
“He really loved doing that and he was good at it,” Lawrence said.
It was there that Gendron got caught up in racing after fixing up a 1964 Porsche Coupe.
And like his other pursuits, Gendron’s focus was on his customers, not selling cars. It was at Alden’s where he sold vehicles to Salinger and Bronson.
“No matter where he was working, he would have customers follow him,” said Louis. “People would buy cars from him because it was him. The dealership and type of car was less important; they just wanted to work with him.”
Lawrence said his father, who grew up skiing and taught lessons at Mount Ascutney, did some landscaping work for Salinger and agreed to teach Salinger’s daughter how to ski.
“They did a couple of runs and at one point when stopping, my dad said something along the lines of ‘when you make turns, you should use your hands more, it will help. Think about punching your father,’ ” Lawrence remembers his father telling him. “The next weekend they came back and Mr. Salinger said to my dad, ‘Lou I don’t know what you said to her but she asked for another lesson with you.’ ”
Stone, the maintenance supervisor at the Bourdon Centre, remembers Gendron as a model of graciousness, understanding and kindness.
“There was always a comforting feeling talking to Lou,” Stone said. “He was a good listener and your thoughts and aspirations were important to him. You were a better person to have known Lou.”
Patrick O’Grady can be reached at pogclmt@gmail.com.
