Rash's Surname Index
Notes for William Kenneth MENDENHALL
William was known as "Bill" to his business colleagues and friends,"Kent" within family circles and "Mendy" to school and college classmates.
In 1923, while attending the University of Delaware, he was one of eight hand-picked students selected to participate in a ground-breaking plan to send American college students to France for their junior year. In contrast to the seven other students, William was entering his senior year. He had studied French for several years at George School and at Delaware under the language professor, Raymond Kirkbride, who developed the plan. But William was deemed so highly suitable and deserving that Kirkbride persuaded the authorities to bend the "juniors only" rule for William. He was excited to be included and in later years recalled his student days at Nancy and the Sorbonne with justifiable pride and nostalgia. Kirkbride's experiment was an unqualified success. French examiners judged the eight undergraduates better prepared in French than the average American graduate student then studying in French universities.
As a merchant based in Hockessin, DE, William was naturally acquainted with Benjamin Franklin Pierce in nearby Kennett Square, PA. Pierce was a self-made businessman who founded an abattoir on Red Clay Creek just south of Kennett Square, and a grocery store/butcher shop on Union Street in the center of Kennett Square. The Pierces' second child was a daughter, Lucy Pierce. An electric trolley or street car line linked the towns of Kennett Square and Hockessin, about five miles south, since 1903. The trolley followed the East Branch of Red Clay Creek, stopping near Frank Pierce's abattoir and home south of Kennett Square. When William started courting Lucy the half-hourly trolley service between the two towns proved convenient.
William joined Bankers Trust Co. on Wall Street after graduation from the University of Delaware in 1924. William ended his long career in banking and related financial services industries at the New Jersey Bankers Association in Princeton, NJ of which he was Executive Vice President.
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