Jack Pickerel

Jack Everett Pickerel was born on July 23, 1936 in Olney, Texas to William and Lorene Pickerel. He had no other siblings from William and Lorene, although Jack did have a brother from William's previous marriage. After Jack was born in Olney, his family moved to Oklahoma City and Atchison before settling in Clay Center. Jack started kindergarten in Clay Center and attended high school there too. Throughout his youth, Jack helped his parents with their strawberry farm, and would often pull a wagon full of strawberries into town to sell. During high school, Jack also worked at a local chicken farm after school and on weekends, and worked for the State Highway Department during the summers. Jack played trombone in the high school band, and also played baseball in the summer. It was during this time in 1952 that he met Carol Milligan at an Explore Scouts hayrack ride, and the two dated throughout high school until Jack graduated from Clay Center High School in 1954. While Carol was still in high school, Jack enlisted in the United States Navy, and the two continued a long distance relationship while writing letters to each other nearly every day. In the Navy, Jack spent much of his time on an icebreaker ship, breaking ice in the polar regions so that other Navy ships could pass through. In 1955 and 1956 he spent time at both poles, working in Antarctica to help build a Navy base and working near the North Pole to help supply the forces working as an early warning line against potential Soviet attacks. When Carol graduated from Clay Center High School in 1956, the two were married only a month later in June of that year. Jack was then relocated to work at the Pentagon in Washington D.C., a job in which he deciphered and delivered incoming telegraph messages to the Chief of Naval Staff. The two moved to nearby Alexandria, Virginia, where they would have their first two children, Scott in 1958 and Kathy in 1959. After finishing his five years of service for the Navy, Jack attended Kansas State University in the fall of 1959 on the G.I. Bill. He started two degrees in electrical engineering and business, but was only able to complete the business degree before his funds from the G.I. Bill ran out. He graduated in 1963, and after receiving four different job offers, he decided to take a job at Wausau Insurance Company (now Liberty Mutual). He started out with claims work, and then moved into district safety and accident prevention. Jack's job required him to move around the country often, and throughout the 1960s he and his family lived in Little Rock, Houston, and then Evansville in Indiana, where their third child Mark was born in 1968. He was then transferred to Olathe and then Linwood in the 1970s, where he and Carol later purchased ten acres outside of town where Jack built an earth-protected house into the side of the hill. Finally, in 1995, Jack retired from the company and moved with Carol back to Clay Center. Jack spent his retirement meeting with friends at local restaurants for coffee as well as hunting and fishing outdoors. Services: 2 p.m. Friday, Sept 16, at Neill-Schwensen-Rook Funeral Home, Clay Center Visitation: 1 p.m. Friday until service time at the funeral home. Burial will be in Greenwood Cemetery, Clay Center, Ks Memorials to Clay Center Zoo, or Meadowlark Hospice in care of the funeral home.