Business Success Leads to 'Third Life'

LAKELAND | After spending 16 years building NuJak Companies., a successful, multi-million-dollar construction business, Frank Kendrick Jr. is paving the way to a more arduous challenge of building the kingdom of God.

LAKELAND | After spending 16 years building NuJak Companies., a successful, multi-million-dollar construction business, Frank Kendrick Jr. is paving the way to a more arduous challenge of building the kingdom of God.

Kendrick, 41, is pursuing a master's degree in ministry at Southeastern University in Lakeland while still working full-time running NuJak, which expects revenues of $20 million this year in commercial construction and property management.

In the local business community, he's actively worked to improve the climate for minority businesses through the Lakeland Area Chamber of Commerce.

NuJak struggled during those early years, Kendrick said, for two main reasons.

One was the 1992 recession and another was the inhospitality of the Polk County business community to a new, young business, particularly one owned by a black man.

"This was not a good place for minority contractors," he said. "Polk County was hard pan - it was hard to break through. That has been the most difficult fight."

MORE TO BE DONE

Kendrick said the local business climate for minorities has greatly improved in those 16 years, but he maintains more needs to be done; thus, his civic involvements.

And now, Kendrick expects to start his "third life" as a full-time minister sometime in the next decade, after handing off his full-time duties at NuJak in Lakeland to his son, Brandon, 17, and other family members.

The transformation is not so sharp as it might seem, said his wife, Sonji Kendrick, 41.

"He ministers to a lot of people now," said Sonji Kendrick, who added than many employees and clients seek his spiritual advice. "He has a very caring way, like a shepherd. He's a dynamic speaker; he has that ability."

Frank Kendrick hasn't traveled a straight path to the Lord, however. Indeed, the journey began after his descent into a private hell.

BORN IN RIVIERA BEACH

Frank Kendrick Jr.'s first life began on Nov. 19, 1966. He was born to Betty Bowers Kendrick and Joe Tomberlin in Riviera Beach. He is the youngest of his mother's five children and her only son.

The parents never married, and Betty Kendrick decided to give him the name of her divorced husband, Frank Kendrick Sr., who promised to raise him as his own son. The elder Kendrick never kept that promise, but Tomberlin did.

Tomberlin saw his son regularly, and by the time he was a teen, the father, an independent contractor, gave Kendrick on-the-job training at the building sites where he worked.

Kendrick also learned his work ethic from his mother, who held jobs as a maid for two families and another as a sales clerk, later assistant manager, in the shoe department at the local Sears.

When Kendrick was a young boy, she enrolled at Palm Beach Community College and eventually received a registered nurse's degree. That led to a better-paying job at a local hospital and a better life for the family, Kendrick said.

"Out of all the things that happened in his life, my going to school had a bigger impact than anything else," Betty Kendrick, 68, said. "I taught him to be independent - if you could provide it for yourself, do so."

Kendrick got his own bachelor's degree in building construction in 1989 from the University of Florida, where he met his wife, the former Sonji Hamilton of Lakeland.

They were married June 30, 1990. They have three sons, Brandon, Morgan, 11, and Tyler, 7.

After working for two construction companies in South Florida, Kendrick began his second life when he moved to Lakeland with Sonji and Brandon in 1992. They lived with her parents for the first few years.

Although he had originally planned to start his own construction company with his father in his native West Palm Beach County, Sonji's parents gave him an opportunity to build a new house for them. He started NuJak on April 6, 1992, for that purpose.

The low point in Kendrick's business and personal life came in late 1994.

NuJak had amassed $98,000 of overdue debt, and creditors were hounding for payment, Kendrick said. The couple kept all their money, $1,300, under their mattress for fear debtors would garnish the money if they kept it in a bank.

One night, he and Sonji talked about divorce, which led to a fight and a shoving match, he said.

His wife called the police, who put him in handcuffs, Kendrick said. But one of the officers knew Kendrick and let him go on the promise of no further physical force.

"That was horrifying for me. It was the low of lows. I felt like I had failed my family, failed myself," Kendrick said.

Broken and sobbing, Kendrick retreated into solitude and picked up a Bible seeking guidance, he said. Finding none, he let it fall to the floor.

Minutes later, he picked up the Bible again and found it had turned open to 2 Corinthians 9. He read verses 6 to 10:

"The point is this: He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully ...

"And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work...'' (Revised Standard Version)

Kendrick views that moment as divine intervention.

"Immediately the tears began to dry up because there was an answer. If it weren't for that word, I could not have gone on," he said.

SOWING EVERYTHING

The Kendricks responded by giving away their entire $1,300 in savings - $1,000 to national evangelist T.D. Jakes, who was visiting Lakeland, and the rest to a relative who had just received a shutoff notice from Lakeland Electric.

Other divine interventions came later, including a $550,000 subcontract in a remodeling of The Lakeland Center, Kendrick said. It was the largest contract NuJak had gotten to date and allowed it to pay off the $98,000 debt without any judgments.

Kendrick has not stopped helping people since, said Sonji Kendrick and Anthony Baker, pastor of Covenant Community Church in Haines City, where Kendrick is serving his ministerial apprenticeship.

"Any opportunity he gets to help people, he steps right in," Baker said. "Frank Kendrick is a man of God."

[ Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-802-7591. ]