Attorney Bill Pannell was a tall, slender man, but with a big presence.
“He had a radio DJ voice – that deep, commanding voice – and when he laughed, it was from his belly,” said attorney and former law partner Kurt Breeze. “It was fun to be around Bill.”
Mr. Pannell enjoyed a wide variety of interests and hobbies alongside his law career.
He died April 15 at age 95.
Mr. Pannell grew up in Rock Island, Ill., and while still in high school, he was an announcer for radio station WHBF, becoming a newscaster and eventually having his own sports show. He joined the Army in 1943 and worked for the Armed Forces Network while stationed in Germany.
Back in the states, he attended the St. Louis University School of Law and lived in St. Louis, where he met his first wife, Lynn.
“They were married in 1952, when I was 9,” said daughter Missy Goettl of Colorado. “When we first moved to Crystal City, he worked as an insurance adjuster. Then he went in with a lawyer named Mr. Ennis, at Ennis and Pannell.”
The firm of Pannell, Dodson and Robinson was established in 1953 and spawned the careers of several prominent local attorneys and judges.
“My first real job after I got licensed in 1974 was with Bill and his partners,” Breeze said. “He was my mentor in many ways, not so much about law but how to deal with people.”
The Pannell family moved to Festus in the early 1960s and had a busy social life.
“My parents had a lot of friends,” Missy said. “They loved playing bridge, dancing, dining out.”
Mr. Pannell was an avid golfer, usually playing at the Joachim Golf Club in Herculaneum.
“Golf was a big part of his life,” Missy said. “He was very athletic and did a lot of sports over his lifetime. When I was growing up, he taught tennis through the YMCA.”
The Pannells’ annual Christmas parties were legendary.
“They’d dispatch me to AP Greens in Pevely to get huge boxes of filet mignon as big as your fist,” Breeze said. “Then they’d give me a blank check to go up to 905 Liquors in South County and get two cases of Chivas Regal Scotch.”
All wasn’t roses for the family, however. Lynn Pannell was diagnosed with cervical cancer shortly after their wedding.
“She survived, but she had extensive radiation treatments,” Missy said. “It left her with a lot of residual damage.”
Mr. Pannell frequented the Hunan Royal restaurant in south St. Louis County, where he became friends with the proprietor, Vietnamese immigrant Loan Le, in the late 1980s.
“I went to file for a divorce in 1991, and I asked if he could handle it,” Loan said. “He said, ‘I’m retired, but I can handle one last one.’”
The two became friends, and spent an increasing amount of time together.
“He had nobody to cook for him,” Loan said. “His family liked that he was being cared for.”
After the death of his wife in 2000, Mr. Pannell and Loan were married. She sold the restaurant and the two spent time traveling and enjoying life.
“We went everywhere -- Thailand, China, Mexico, France, Italy,” she said. “We went on a cruise in Alaska, a five-island cruise in Hawaii. I was so lucky to have Bill.”
Mr. Pannell enjoyed the social component of travel as much as the cultural.
“He was an avid snow skier,” Breeze recalled. “It was fun to get in an airplane and go on a ski trip. My first time skiing, in Aspen, I got up to the mid-mountain lodge and there’s this huge, sun-drenched deck, with all these gals in tight ski outfits, and there’s Bill with a drink in his hand and a crowd around him, probably telling a joke.”
Mr. Pannell’s biggest passion was building and flying custom aircraft.
“He had airplanes like other people have cars,” Loan said. “He said he dreamed about it as a young kid, and he got his license at 37.”
“His first plane was a Stinson, and it didn’t have a lot of instruments,” Missy said. “He and my mom and I would fly up to Rock Island to visit his mother, and he would just follow the highways basically.”
“He even flew commercial for an air freight company,” Breeze said. “But he was extremely cautious and conservative about risk-taking, and when he finally failed the physical in 1999, he gave it up and sold his plane.”
Mr. Pannell had enjoyed good health, but in 2011, he had artery blockages that required stents.
“He would always go to the YMCA,” Loan said. “He never missed, five days a week.”
He suffered a fall in October 2019 and soon after that was diagnosed with kidney disease.
“He just went downhill,” Loan said. “He couldn’t eat much; he just drank meal shakes. He started using a walker. We had to call neighbors to help get him to bed.”
The decline continued, and Mr. Pannell eventually was sent home on hospice.
“His friend, Judy Williams, came to visit, and she told him, ‘We will take care of Loan.’ He slipped away peacefully,” Loan said.
She said her husband will be remembered for his passions – his family, his work, his hobbies, life in general.
“He never forgot a joke or a story,” Loan said. “He was so friendly, so funny, so kind.
“He was a good man.”
“Life Story,” posted Saturdays on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.