Obituary of Russell Elmer Knoerl

Russell Knoerl, built home after 2 careers Russell Elmer Knoerl remained engaged with and excited about life to the very end of it. Mr. Knoerl, who played football at the University of Kentucky under Paul "Bear" Bryant, mastered two radically different occupations and built a house from scratch after he retired 13 years ago. Tuesday evening, he sat down in a chair at his Union home after returning from a trip to the store for ice cream. "He said he felt really dizzy," said a daughter, Cindy Lou Knoerl, with whom Mr. Knoerl and his wife, Joyce Ellen Knoerl, lived. He became unconscious, and attempts by an emergency crew to revive him failed. He was pronounced dead at St. Luke West Hospital in Florence; he was 75. Earlier in the day he had worked on the house, and just three weeks prior he had gotten a good report from his doctor, who was treating him for high blood pressure and diabetes. Mr. Knoerl played on the last undefeated football team at Holmes High School in Covington in 1947 and accepted an athletic scholarship to UK. A tackle, he labored for two years under Bryant, finally deciding that the legendary taskmaster had taken the fun out of football for him. "He said Bryant was the kind of coach who thought, if two hours of practice was good, four hours was better. If running a mile was good, three miles was better," Cindy Knoerl said. He returned to Northern Kentucky and continued to take college classes at night and joined the Covington Fire Department. He was a firefighter for 19 years, until he joined Worldwide Church of God, which forbade its members from working on Saturdays. Seeking a Monday through Friday job, he found it in the lab at General Electric in Evendale, Ohio, where he became a technician. He retired after 28 years there. Retirement for Mr. Knoerl meant jumping into building a home on the farm his daughter had bought at Big Bone in Boone County. He and his son, Marcus Russell Knoerl, did virtually all of the work themselves. "He just had a knack for that sort of thing," Cindy Knoerl said. "Plumbing, electricity -- he picked it all up. He was really a perfectionist." Apart from the house-building, he found time for two pursuits -- building radio-controlled airplanes and lavishing attention on his grandchildren. "He did all sorts of things with them," his daughter said. "He was teaching them to play bridge on the computer." A son, Mikus Elmer Knoerl, died in 1979. Survivors, in addition to his wife, daughter and son, are two other daughters, Vicky Lynn Ison of Erlanger and Tammy Lee Carnahan of Walton; nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Services will be at the convenience of the family. Burial will be in Forest Lawn Cemetery, Erlanger. Chambers and Grubbs Funeral Home, Florence, is handling arrangements.