Steve Kinder is remembered by his family as thorough, fast and detail-oriented — traits that make for a great electrician.
Kinder, 64, of Fishers, died March 18. He and his brother, David Kinder, co-founded and owned Kinder Electric Co. in Fishers, a longtime electrical business that has served the greater Indianapolis area for nearly 40 years.
David Kinder said he and Steve, his younger brother, grew up in Home Place, which is now a neighborhood within the City of Carmel. The family moved there in 1955 and Steve was born in 1960. The brothers were a little more than eight years apart and shared a bedroom.
“He was the little brother that could try my patience, so to speak,” Kinder said, laughing. “I guess I wasn’t too old (then), either. But eight and a half years — that’s a big gap.”
Kinder said they didn’t have much in common as kids, but they reconnected when Steve was a senior at Carmel High School and started working half days at their father’s electrical firm, where David also worked.
“That began his training in the electrical business – during his senior year, even though we grew up with it — our father had been in the electrical business since about 1951,” Kinder said. “We both ended up working there until we started our company in May of 1985.”
Steve graduated from Carmel High School in 1978, which is when he went to work full-time with their dad, James Kinder. After the brothers founded Kinder Electric Co., James Kinder stuck with his own business for a few more years before retiring. But, in addition to electric know-how, a need to work appears to run in the family.
“He had been retired about … probably six to nine months and then Mom figured out he needed something to do,” David Kinder said. “He came on board with us. So, as I like to say, I worked for my dad for 15 years and he worked for us for 17 years.”
It was during that time that Steve Kinder met Lori, his wife of 30 years, who worked at a neighboring business. She said Steve was a great husband and father and was as precise about his lawn as he was about wiring a house.
“He cut the grass every three days,” she said. “And boy, if we were gone and somebody else would come cut that grass and they didn’t do it right, as soon as we got home, he’d be on that tractor cutting the grass because it didn’t look right.”
The two were married on Valentine’s Day — to help Steve remember their anniversary, she said. Their last date-night was an anniversary dinner a little more than a month before he died.
“I don’t think that any of us have quite grasped that he won’t be coming back,” Lori Kinder said, adding that he had been planning to retire — although she suspected that he would have been as successful at retirement as his father.
Lori Kinder said she loved Steve’s persistence and his honesty. When they met, she said she knew she wanted to take care of him. She said she also loves the Kinder family, and they would often all travel together.
David Kinder recalled some of the cruises they went on as a family, including to Bermuda and other warm locations. The brothers both built homes in Florida to escape the cold Midwestern winters.
David Kinder said Steve was known for working quickly — wiring a whole building in a week by himself — and for wanting everything to be just right.
“All the wires had to be straight,” he said. “They had to go straight down the wall. You walk into a Kinder-wired home or apartment or whatever, and everything had to be just perfectly straight. He was a perfectionist.”
In addition to Lori and David, Steve is survived by his sons, Austin and Nick; sister, Carole; and several nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, James and Ruth Kinder, and his sister, Janice Zapapas.
