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It started with farm animals, pig chickens, guinea hens, and we had some crows we raised,
ravens or crows. We had a pony for a while that my sister Elizabeth rode.
That's Judd SD Kendall and if that name sounds familiar to you it's because he's the father
of one of the producers of the show. And you're hearing a story core interview they did together
about all the animals Judd lived with growing up. We had a flying squirrel that my brother and I
kept in our room. His name was peanuts and ran free. No cage, no nothing just lived in our room.
I had a friend over to spend the night and the flying squirrel got under his covers.
He was quite shaken. This was in the suburbs of St. Louis during the 1950s. Judd's father Henry
Kendall was a World War II veteran, a salesman, and an obsessive collector of animals.
You had to be careful of the otter. The neighbors in the fall would stop putting chlorine in
their swimming pool and we would swim with the otter although it would nip sometimes. We had a
skunk for a little while, descended skunk. How did that work? That worked fine. It was an intelligent
animal. There were a number of birds of prey. My father would carry them all around. The hawks were
in and out of the house often hooded. You trained them to hunt, right? You don't train a hawk to do
anything. But my father had the goss hawk in the house one day and my younger brother was probably
two and a half. The goss hawk must have thought he looked tasty and he nailed him in the pantry.
He wasn't hurt but that's when my mother made the rule no more birds of prey in the pantry.
It's a family rule. I'm Jasmine Morris. I'm Michael Garafalo. In this season on the
story core podcast from NPR, stories about people who have found unique and some might say peculiar
ways of living their lives. But if that person is someone you love, what's it like being on the
other side and having to live with them every day? I've heard that he got along better with
animals than humans. That's in fact true.
Now with all the animals that Henry Kendall took in and cared for, he definitely had a favorite.
We got a full-blooded wolf as a young pup. We would all take turns giving the wolf a bottle
and it grew up beautiful, strong, large, intelligent. We were instructed to call it a malamute
north in dog that looks a lot like a wolf. But he was named Peter, which was a clue, not a very subtle
one. And so why weren't you allowed to say it? My father was worried about what the reaction would be
with our 30 neighbors and the other little sub-divisions around them. Peter was fine with the family,
but it was my father that he looked forward to seeing. My father, his business was a small industrial
supplying company. And I think this was soul-killing work for him. And so he would come home and
his suit from the city after working all day, strip into old clothes and go out in the backyard and
wrestle with the wolf. But I cannot remember any times when he came home and did anything with the
kids. Do you think his military service had anything to do with that? Yeah. He never talked about his
war experiences until much later in life. He was a pilot. He was in the Pacific. And my understanding
is that his job was mainly strafing runs. And so he would be shooting at people running on the ground.
He suffered from fairly serious PTSD untreated. He was really very nervous about being with people.
The wolf was his best friend. And he was, I'm sure, the wolf's best friend. And it was his way of
having a bond with a living being that did not make him anxious. What is the happiest year, Rassam?
Probably wrestling with the wolf. We had Peter for several years. But then some neighborhood
kids came onto our property. He shouldn't have been on there and he scared the Jesus out of them.
And that's when the wolf had to go. My father found a rich man in Michigan who had
quite a few acres fenced in and wanted a real wolf to run free in his woods. So the wolf just was gone one day.
After a short break, we'll find out what happened to Peter the wolf. Stay with us.
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After he was forced to get rid of Peter, Henry tried to forget the wolf. He turned his attention
to his hawks and falcons, but it wasn't so easy to let go. We did see Peter one more time.
A few years after he was sent off to his woods where he could run. My father went on the adventure
of his life, which was to go up to the high Arctic with permits to get two-year falcons and two
paragrants. I was probably young teenager and he chose me to go along with him, which was an odd
choice because it wasn't much of a relationship. But I went with him. It was just him and me.
At the beginning stage, we drove through Michigan. My father was saying we were going to take a little
detour. I remember being off the beaten path a little bit and then a long driveway going through a
forest. We pulled up to a large house. We knocked on the door and there was an actual butler that
answered the door. My father asked about the wolf. I remember him saying that, oh, he sold that wolf
to a tourist zoo a year ago. So my father found out where the tourist zoo was and we went there. It
was one of these little rural Midwest local zoos. The largest pen was the wolf and it was Peter
and he was lying on the cement floor just looking bored. I remember my father started saying,
Peter, Peter, Peter! At first the wolf just growled and then probably he smelled and recognized
the scent. The wolf was on his feet and was just overjoyed. I mean, just was right at the fence
and my father was sticking his hands through the fence. And then in what would seem to be an
impossible turn of events, my father convinced the people of the zoo to let him go in the cage and play
with the wolf. And so for probably half an hour, he was in the cage with the wolf and they were
wrestling like they used to in the backyard. I just remember sort of the delight in my father
and in the wolf being together and playing again. The problem became getting my father out of the
cage because the wolf saw exactly what was happening and the wolf was not about to get separated from
my father by an inch. And I remember one of the keepers hitting the wolf from the back with a pole
and the wolf turned to snap at him and my father went out the door and then we had to leave.
She was silent in the car afterwards but we didn't talk much anyway because I wasn't really
frankly interested in talking with him at the time. I sincerely wish that my relationship with
my father had been better because I was not in the least empathetic to him because there really
was no relationship except anger within me from really having grown up with him there but without him.
But it must have been incredibly hard for him knowing that his best friend was being left behind
in the cage. When you think of that whole experience with Peter now like what does that tell you
about your dad? Thinking about it now of course there's a lot different than thinking about it then
but for years he didn't call, we didn't call and talk, he didn't write. When your mother and I
got married he didn't come to the wedding, I don't think it occurred to him. Yeah I mean I don't
have many memories of him. Yeah and when you were young I probably didn't talk about him all that
much. I don't know. I mean a little bit but not really. But he did visit Maine once. I remember we
picked him up in Portland and he wanted to stop in Brunswick because he had attended Bowdoin
College for a year and a half and he specifically took us to the fraternity house where he had lived.
We went in and he showed us what step on the stairs he was standing on when he heard the Pearl
Harbor had been bombed because he dropped out of Bowdoin right after that. To go fight.
And join the Marines. At Bowdoin he was studying birds. If the war had not come he probably would have
ended up a professor of ornithology somewhere which is what he probably should have been doing.
World War II totally changed his life. I brought a verse to a song about him once.
I'll tell you the story of my father who was born with all the gifts the gods could give
but they sent him off to fight a great war even though he had his whole life to live.
And it's not that he came home wounded. He came home strangled up inside.
His only friends with a falcon and a wolf who couldn't understand the fear it had to hide.
That was Judd Estichendel with his son also named Judd and Chapel Hill North Carolina.
Henry Kendall died in 2007 and we'll never know what became of Peter the Wolf.
Okay so this week's question who is your Peter the Wolf? Maybe it's an animal that got you
through a tough patch or when you had to walk away from. Let us know by leaving a voicemail at 702
706 talk. The number again is 702 706 TALK or you can email us at podcast at storycore.org.
Next week a mother and son who have always been honest with each other have their most difficult
conversation yet. I worry that you'll never know how scary it is for me sometimes to imagine
life without you. That's something I can't make better for you and I don't doubt it'll be tough
but you'll be okay. This episode was produced by Max Young Rice and Judd Estichendel.
Our technical director is Jarrett Floyd. Amy Drosdowska is our executive producer and our fact
checker is Erica Anderson. The art for this season was created by Liz McCarty.
Special thanks to Joe Corona in Vondias. I'm Michael Garafalo and I'm Jasmine Morris. Thanks for listening.
Support for this podcast comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,
a private corporation funded by the American people.
