Ed Bendell was the kind of father who always said “yes” when one of his kids picked up a stray animal and asked, “Daddy can we keep this dog?” Or cat or rabbit or bird.
In fact, Bendell, who died June 10 at 72, was delighted to have more animals around.
Bendell and his wife, Laurie Bendell, had gone square dancing on June 9. The next day, they went out to eat. He fed the animals and then did some yard work. He came in to lie down and died of cardiopulmonary failure, his daughter, Debbie Bendell said.
Ed Bendell designed and built fancy birdhouses, (there were 40 in the yard) and had at least two doghouses in the back yard and one in the front, for drop-ins.
A friend, Wanda Cline, called him the “Dr. Doolittle” of his Centennial neighborhood.
Bendell couldn’t resist any animal. If one showed up with identification, he tried to find the owner, and if there was no ID, he posted signs in the neighborhood. If no one showed up, the animal stayed.
The first animal he got for the family he hid in a pocket of his gray overcoat. “But we could see the dog’s tail sticking out,” recalled Debbie Bendell.
Ed Bendell took pets to the vet when necessary. One rainy night, he found a hawk that couldn’t fly so he put the bird in a clean trash can and took it to a Denver woman known for fixing bird wings.
Another time, the Bendells found a duck egg and tried “to incubate it” with a light, “but it never hatched,” said Laurie Bendell.
Laurie Bendell is as fond of animals as her husband was, “but sometimes we had to work on her to get her to let us keep a pet,” said Debbie Bendell.
Over the years, the family fed foxes, raccoons, ducks and geese. The most rabbits they had at one time was 36.
“And we pet-sat for friends when they went out of town,” said Laurie Bendell.
Edward William Bendell Sr. was born in Philadelphia on Sept. 3, 1934, and went to high school there. He met Laurie Kalbach when they both worked at Kresge’s five-and-dime store in Upper Darby, Pa. She worked in the storeroom, and he was a “soda jerk.”
They married and moved to Denver in 1968.
Bendell worked for Navajo Freight Lines and later as a traffic manager for Johns Mansville, a builder of insulation systems.
In addition to his wife and daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Lauren Harriman, and son, Edward Bendell Jr., both of Littleton; four grandchildren; his mother, Dorothy Bendell, of Littleton; and his brother, Robert Bendell of Pennsylvania.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at vculver@denverpost.com or 303-954-1223.
