Just as I was leaving the office Friday afternoon, reporter Bob Burns told me there had been a one-vehicle accident on Fountain Hills Boulevard and an 80-year-od man had died.

Two hours later I received word that the man in the accident was a long-time friend, Don Kinder.

We go back some 41 years. He was in sales management with the original developer of Fountain Hills, McCulloch Properties when we met. I was working in their advertising agency and one of my assignments was The Salesletter, a monthly  publication that kept all of the sales team up to date with the company’s activities.

I would get together once a month with him and Gene Vogt, who at that time was vice president of sales.  They would tell me how the sales program was going.

Don, after leaving McCulloch and Pratt Properties, following the acquisition of parent company McCulloch Oil by Charles Hurwitz and Maxxam, went into business for himself in the community. Few local businesspeople made more of an impact on the local business community in the 1980s than Don Kinder.

Don has always been motivated to do his best and his drive translated into a very successful career in sales and marketing.

Talk about the self-made man, he only attended one day of high school. He said he didn’t like the smell of the place. So he went to Colorado to pick peaches when he was just 13 years old.

By the time he was 19, he had worked at many jobs including a disc jockey position at a St. Louis radio station. He got his first sales position with Jay Clement Stone Insurance in Chicago. In 1964, he was traveling west on route 66, when he saw a billboard for Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

He liked the sound of that and turned south once he was in Kingman. That drive down Arizona 95 changed his life forever, He got a job working on the landscape crew in Lake Havasu City. With sales already in his blood and his positive mental attitude, he decided he would study real estate at night. He got his license and was hired for a position with the McCulloch sales staff. He did so well that within a few years of property sales he was promoted to a management position.

During that time he met a McCulloch secretary named Kay, who eventually became his wife. They were married on Dec. 23, 1965. Today, you know Kay as the very successful, friendly owner of Fountain Fashions, which operated for years in the Village Bazaar (she opened the business in 1973) and is now in a much larger location in the Bashas’ shopping center.

After moving into management, Don and Kay relocated to the Valley in the late 1960s where McCulloch Properties based its operations in Scottsdale. Don remembers traveling to an area on the east side of the McDowells with Lorne Pratt, who was then in charge of the development firm’s management and marketing.

“My first reaction to viewing the Fountain Hills property was it was so far out,” he recalls. “But in talking with Lorne, I told him that while the property was a long way (about 14 miles) from the nearest homes and businesses, that growth would be soon coming to the area and that it would be attractive to higher income people, people in management and professionals. That turned out to be the trend in the northeast Valley.”

I’d say that was a very prophetic statement.

When Pratt took over McCulloch Properties in 1978, Don joined him as his sales manager. Don achieved a major victory in bringing noted builder Estes Homes to Fountain Hills and they built more than 70 homes in a subdivision along El Lago Boulevard west of Fountain Hills Boulevard.

Pratt later lost control of Pratt Properties when Charles Hurwitz took over the former McCulloch Oil Company.

Don had always worked for Pratt, so his days with  the developer were over. He decided to open his own full-service real estate agency. He called it Don Kinder & Associates Real Estate and it opened on the Avenue of the Fountains in a building now occupied by Sofrita’s.

It became one of the town’s most successful real estate firms. He also got into the retail business, opening a men’s clothing store called Kinder & Company. He sold quality merchandise that had its own following.

“The store did o.k. but the town’s population wasn’t anywhere big enough to support it,” he said. “The real estate firm did better and better and as I added agents, I started using more of the store space. Eventually, I had to make the decision to close the men’s shop.”

Before he did, he started the Fountain Hills Merchants Association to promote local shopping. He was frustrated with the Chamber not doing enough to promote local shopping.

He said the Chamber at that time was promoting real estate sales but was neglecting the merchants.

Somehow he talked me into getting involved with his newly formed association. Eventually, he and I worked out a merger of the two organizations and I went on the Chamber board as chair of the Merchants Committee.

Always a promoter, Kinder started a make believe institution of higher learning called “The University of Fountain Hills” with a friend named George Schnurr. Schnurr had moved here from Iowa where a similar promotion called the University of Okoboji was started.

Kinder was the “chancellor” and he carried a line of merchandise from t-shirts to key chains in his shop.

“It was all tongue in cheek,” he recalls, “but it gave the town something fun to talk about other than our politics.”

Don spent 10 years in the 1990s marketing products in Europe, Mexico and Australia. He did well, but he was a away from home a lot.

He got back into local real estate sales in 1999.

Don would have been 81 on August 3. He and his positive mental attitude are going to be missed.