Pannell to speak to historical society

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July 13, 2010

Submitted by the Whitfield Murray Historical Society

The Whitfield Murray Historical Society’s Sunday 2:30 p.m. meeting will be at the Eton City Hall in Murray County. The guest speaker will be Charles A. Pannell Jr., a federal judge for the Northern District of Georgia since 2000.

Pannell was born in DeKalb County in 1946. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1967 and from the UGA law school in 1970. He served in the Army Reserves JAG Corps, and was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia before beginning private practice in 1972. He served as a district attorney and later a Superior Court judge in the Conasauga Judicial Circuit.

Pannell was recommended by former U.S. senator Max Cleland and was nominated by President Bill Clinton to serve on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in 1999 and was commissioned as such in 2000; he is still serving in that capacity. Pannell will talk about his father, Charles Adams Pannell Sr., and the Pannell family’s history in Murray County.

Charles A. Pannell Sr. was born in Eton on June 19, 1911. He attended Young Harris College, Mercer University and the University of Georgia. He was admitted to the Georgia Bar after two years of law school at Mercer and one at the University of Georgia and received his LL.B. degree in 1937.

He married Ruth Ann Loughridge Dec. 24, 1939. They had three sons, Charles Jr.; James, an attorney in Savannah, and a member of the Georgia Legislature; and William, an attorney in Atlanta.

At age 21 Pannell was elected mayor of Eton, and later the county attorney of Murray County for 1940-44, 1949-50; city attorney, Chatsworth, 1942-50. He belonged to the Methodist Church; Sigma Delta Kappa; the Gridiron Club; the Masons; Odd Fellows; and was the president of the Chatsworth Lions Club 1959-60.

He was at various times on the governor’s staff, the Democratic Executive Committee, and was president of the Young Harris Alumni Association. Pannell served in the Georgia House of Representatives, 1939-46, 1949-50, 1961-62; was chairman of the Budget Committee that rewrote the Georgia budget laws, 1962-63. He was Gov. Vandiver’s House floor leader for the appropriation bill fight in 1962, a senator from the 43rd District in 1947-48 and in 1959-60; senator from the 54th District; Senate floor leader, 1963.

Pannell was a proponent of junior colleges and instrumental in establishing Dalton Junior College. He was a member of Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, 1950-55, and chairman from 1953-1955. He was known as one of the best Parole Board appointments of that period and was called “fair and honest."

In the Legislature in 1961, he introduced the first bills to assure that public schools would remain open at the time that many legislators and others were clamoring for a shutdown of the whole system when the University of Georgia was ordered integrated.

He was in the center ring in the two governor fights in the 1940s. One governor said of him, “If he told you something, you could count on it … He was unyielding when it came to the principles he believed in.” He also served on the Georgia Court of Appeals 1963-1976.

The public is cordially invited to join the Whitfield Murray Historical Society to hear Judge Pannell speak.