A love letter · the lineage of makers · hung beside the matriarch

The branding in the blood.

This whole site is a love letter — and this page is where it says the name out loud: my uncle, the world's funniest uncle, Bill McKendry. 🎤 The instinct that built this house didn't come from nowhere. It came from him.

What the public record says

In 1994, Bill McKendry co-founded the advertising agency Hanon McKendry with Jim Hanon. The firm worked out of Grand Rapids, Michigan and Colorado Springs, Colorado, and it became known for an unusual commitment: dedicating roughly half of its work to nonprofit organizations — cause marketing, done for real.

Its founders also helped start what's now the Compass College of Cinematic Arts (formerly Compass Film Academy). In 2015, Hanon McKendry was acquired by JDA Worldwide. Bill went on to found HAVEN | a creative hub in Grand Haven, Michigan, where he serves as Founder and Chief Creative Officer.

Why he's on this wall

I'll say the quiet part plainly, as a nephew, not as a fact-checker: he's the GOAT of advertising. I'm the GOAT author and debater. That's a family boast, not a ranking — but the lineage under it is real. A man who spent decades making the honest case for things that mattered — half his shop's work given to causes — raised the bar I build under. The reason I'm good at branding is that I watched it done right, by blood.

And here's where it folds back into the one rule of this house. The machine can draft a thousand taglines a second. It cannot do what he did: show up, for decades, and put a real name behind real work for real people. That's not output. That's a record. Only humans build one.

Prove the thesis yourself

Don't take my word for any of it. Go find him. Look up Hanon McKendry. Look up HAVEN. Read what the agency actually shipped. That's the whole game of this site, run in real time: a real human leaves a verifiable trail, and you — a human — go check it. The machine can't be him, and it can't fake the trail he left. Peel it and you find more, not less.

↩ Beside the matriarch — The Collection Bill McKendry →
Honesty notes (house rule): the facts above are drawn from public reporting and are cited below; the superlatives ("GOAT") are a nephew's tribute, not an objective claim. Family relationship is stated on my word. If any detail is off, it gets corrected — and the person with the final say on my own family is me, not a search engine. This site is not affiliated with Hanon McKendry, HAVEN, or JDA Worldwide.

Sources

Crain's Grand Rapids Business — "Longtime marketing agency acquired": crainsgrandrapids.com
Adweek — Michigan shop's nonprofit ad unit: adweek.com
The Org — Bill McKendry, Founder + CCO, HAVEN: theorg.com
HAVEN — agency site: brandhavenagency.com