Nancy M. Pannell

The family will receive friends at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church, 439 7th St. Pl SW, Conover, NC from 10:00 o’clock a.m. to 11:30 a.m., before the funeral at noon, Thursday, November 3, 2016, the Rev. Mary Miller-Zurell officiating with Rev. Dr. Richard B. Graf assisting. A portion of her cremated remains and a gravemarker will be placed at a later date in the custom of her family at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Cherryville, NC, and the rest at Myrtle Beach and the Catawba River.

Nancy was a small-town girl who grew up in Bessemer City, NC, born there on March 12, 1933. She was the youngest child of the late Monroe Cone and Jewel Dellinger Mauney.

For Nancy, Bessemer City was a fairy land, three movies on Saturday, the drugstore, the huge railroad cut for the two track main line of the Southern Railroad where you weren’t supposed to go (but she did), Whetstone Mountain, Lake Montonia and Suttles on Wilkinson Blvd. The always available schoolyard playground with its corkscrew fire escape was everything, her mother that didn’t work outside the home, and most of all playmates and friends she made in Bessemer City that were always there the rest of her life.

Nancy graduated from Bessemer City High School in 1951 and following the family tradition matriculated to Lenoir-Rhyne College and finished in the late summer of 1954. It was at registration that her eyes met her future husband “across a crowded room”. In later life Martin would tell how he described Nancy by Bob Hope’s theme song, “You might have been a headache, but you never were a bore!” Martin Coleman Pannell of Claremont and Nancy were married for 63 years. However, for decades the family and Martin and Nancy celebrated their anniversary on September 4, 1954, the date they had a ceremony in front of family in Waco, Texas where Martin was stationed in the US Air Force. In actuality, the two had secretly married in late spring of 1953 in Gaffney, SC, two days before Martin reported for duty. The secret of the earlier marriage was only revealed in the last four or five years.

While Martin finished his Air Force career and later his education as a lawyer, Nancy taught public school while raising her family which includes her sons, Monroe Pannell and Robert Pannell, a daughter, Margaret Elizabeth Pannell who predeceased her in 1961, and a daughter, Leah Pannell Martin. Later she taught at the Conover Methodist Church play school and for years afterward children would come to her in restaurants or wherever acknowledging the difference she had made in their lives.

After the family got settled in Catawba County Nancy and Martin became heavily involved in local and state Republican politics. She worked on many campaigns over the years – some successful, some not. Nancy, along with many others in the county, were instrumental in the election of the first Republican governor of the 20th century, Jim Holshouser. Her last campaign was the most fun as she helped her friend, Representative Doris Huffman of Newton, make an unsuccessful run for Lieutenant Governor. Nancy, like many of us, changed many of her views over the years. Note: She did not die a die-hard Republican.

Nancy will be remembered as an advocate for those in need regardless of ability, age or race. More often than not it would be some child that was doing without food and shelter or needed someone to advocate on their behalf. On many occasions she would see that such children got properly clothed and sheltered and a voice if one was needed. She served on the Catawba County Social Services Board, Chairman part of the time, with a special interest about young children, unwanted and uncared for children, and foster care.

As we all know there are many sides to share about a lost loved one who was both a saint and a sinner. It is not possible, nor practical, to share all these various sides of Nancy. Years later one child she helped came running across the Conover Post Office parking lot with her two kids in tow, and exclaimed “Mrs. Pannell, oh! Mrs. Pannell, you saved my life!” Then there’s the one about six months ago at a local business when Nancy was still getting out. Nancy, as a teacher, had helped solve the owner’s learning disability. With a few customers standing around and as Nancy came in this former student and business man announced, “If it wasn’t for this lady I wouldn’t have had this business all these years.” And finally, there’s the kid she found sleeping in a restaurant that had no real clothes for a young high school student. She picked him up, took him to Belk’s, got him some khaki pants, a blue blazer, and penny loafers and he was on his way. A scene years later when Nancy’s in the living room with her husband and here comes a young man running across the yard in his Marine Dress Greens, maybe to show Nancy how far he’d come from that day at Belk’s. It is hard to say how many folks she welcomed into her home for stays of weeks, if not months – those folks just needed a place to go and Nancy provided it.

On the fun side of Nancy, she was always up for an adventure or instigating one, be it art in the city, Washington (her favorite), out west (Yellowstone), and she loved the water, Catawba River, Lake Lure, and any part of the Long Bay of South Carolina.

Nancy was a long-time resident of the Conover Community from 1961 until her death. In addition to her parents and her daughter, Elizabeth, she was preceded in death by two sisters, Dorothy Mauney Whitley and Caroline Mauney Moyer, and brother, Robert Vance Mauney.

Survivors, all from Catawba County except as noted, include her husband, Martin Pannell, sons, Monroe Pannell and Kathy Moose, Robert Pannell and Sherri Pannell of Harrisburg, daughter, Leah Martin and Tim Martin; five grandchildren, Meredith Moose Huret, Vance Moose, Coleman Pannell and Margaret Martin, and Russell Pannell of Harrisburg; and three great-grandchildren.

Memorials may be made to her church, Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church, 439 7th St. Pl. SW, Conover, NC 28613.

Condolences may be sent to the Pannell family at www.drumfh-conover.com

The Pannell family has entrusted funeral arrangements to Drum Funeral Home & Cremations in Conover.