David L. Kuykendall

“From Rags to Riches” – is what he chose for his headstone.

Born at home in Emma, NC, his family and kin worked the grandparents dairy farm to feed themselves. The farm was lost during the Great Depression so then his father, Clyde, worked a variety of jobs to support his wife, Daisy, and their two children, Doris and David. Eventually his father began driving semi-trucks.

David worked as soon as someone would hire him – paper boy, window washer, box boy and school bus driver. David learned to drive a semi from riding with his father and eventually drove coast-to-coast via back roads to avoid the scales as he was always overloaded in order to make more money.

On his 18th birthday he registered for the draft in Petaluma, CA, where he was delivering a load. He joined the Marines and trained at Camp Lejeune, NC where he drove extra heavy equipment for a tank battalion. He also raced a Mercury that was souped up by the base repair shop. He did ship out to Haiti, but the Korean War was ending so he rejoined the civilian world.

He drove semis for a while, then worked in a brokerage office and eventually bought his own brokerage. He loaded produce which is high risk due to its limited life. He had offices in Florida, Arizona and California. He did go broke once and drove again to become solvent and started back up in the business.

He lived in California with his first wife and adopted her children, Cheryl and Craig, and she had one more child, David. He connected with his son, Gary, when he turned 18 and put him through college and eventually, they worked together in California. David started buying commercial real estate in the Inland Empire of California, along with running a brokerage business. In 1989, he designed and built his custom home in California.

For recreation he joined a Jeep club and owned a tricked-out Jeep that would crawl over rocks and handle most any type of terrain… as long as it had an expert driver.

David was a widower and married in 2007. He and Mary K. traveled all over the US in an RV bus, towing the Jeep/SeaDos/or a pickup truck at different times.

David was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007; in 2017, he was radiated for tonsil cancer and was on a feeding tube due to collateral damage from the treatment.

He lived a very full and event filled life, and drove himself out of poverty! He is survived by his wife Mary K.; son, Craig and his wife Lori; grandchildren, Michelle, Irene, Christine, Amber, Ashley, Nicole, Sina and Zachary; great-grandchildren; nieces, LaRene, Eloise and Terri; nephew, Ozzie; and cousin, Perry.