Lee Pinnell
Lee Hart Pinnell was born on 24 May 1920 in Saginaw, Michigan. He was the youngest son of J. Raymond Pinnell, a West Virginian, and Irene C. Short, who had been born in Texas to Canadian parents. His middle name was his father's mother's maiden name. She was Lee Ann Hart of Beverly, West Virginia, and she had died in 1888, long before he was born. So he carried a grandmother's whole name, Lee Hart, as his own.
He grew up in Saginaw in a house of brothers. In 1930, at nine, he was living with his parents and with J. Raymond Jr., James E. and his sister Catherine. A first son, John Hart Pinnell, had been born and had died in the first months of 1910, ten years before Lee. Catherine married and died young, in February 1938, at twenty five. His father died in November 1939, when Lee was nineteen.
On 1 July 1941, five months before Pearl Harbor, he registered for the draft at Saginaw. He was working for the Wilcox-Rich Corporation. The card describes him as five feet eight and a half inches tall and 145 pounds, with brown eyes, brown hair and a dark complexion. The person who would always know his address was J. R. Pinnell, by then his older brother rather than his father.
He was inducted into the army on 26 July 1944 at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, as a private, serial number 36471559. He was single, with no dependents. His civilian work was given as general clerk, and he had three years of high school. He was enlisted for the duration of the war plus six months.
After the war he married Marcia M. McLurg, a Saginaw girl four years younger, the elder daughter of Harold L. McLurg and Lillian Wylie. On 4 April 1950 the census taker found them in Saginaw. Lee was 29 and worked in an automobile parts factory. Marcia was 25. Their son Thomas L. Pinnell was an infant.
The marriage did not last. On 13 August 1955 Lee married Jo Anne Dengler of Saginaw, the daughter of Arthur Dengler and Leona Thiel, at Angola in Steuben County, Indiana, across the state line. On that license he gave his parents as Raymond Pinnell and Irene Short and said he had been married twice before. Marcia later remarried and became Marcia Anderson.
Lee Hart Pinnell died in Saginaw on 14 May 1981, ten days before his sixty first birthday. He was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Saginaw, in Section 1, Lot 1716, the family lot where his father, his mother and his grandfather John B. Short already lay. His flat granite stone reads "FATHER" above his full name, with the years 1920 and 1981 on either side of a carved flower.
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Cite: Heirology, "Lee Pinnell (1920-1981)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/lee-pinnell-1920-1981-bb93a7.