CASCO – Friends and family of Stuart “Toby” Pennels, 55, the Casco man who died last week as a result of injuries from a motorcycle accident, described the father of three as a decisive, consensus-building public servant, who approached his numerous community-service projects in the Lakes Region with the same spirit that he wielded as a brigade commander in Baghdad during the 2007 troop “surge.”

Pennels, a retired U.S. Army colonel with 30 years of military service, was in the midst of running as a Republican for the District 26 state Senate seat when he crashed his motorcycle near Rangeley on Aug. 3. He died Sept. 4.

The run for the Senate was the latest in a long line of efforts that Pennels made to contribute to the Lakes Region’s civic life since he returned to Windham in 2000. After growing up in Windham and Casco, Pennels lived with his wife, Brenda, in Texas, Illinois and New York, before moving into his family’s old homestead on Ward Road, where they lived for 13 years.

A president of the Windham Veterans Association, past president of the Sebago Lake Rotary Club, chairman of the Sebago Lake Ice Fishing Derby, and past chairman of the Windham-Raymond school board, Pennels’ capacity to devote his time to public service initiatives was seemingly inexhaustible, said his wife of 31 years.

“There was nobody that he wouldn’t do something for, to the point where sometimes it would drive me crazy because he was just always doing stuff for other people,” Pennels said. “But it was just who he was.”

Pennels was just as devoted to serving individuals as he was to organizations, his wife said. During the summer, Pennels found a set of keys in the Old Port with no identification, she recalled.

“Toby put an ad on Craigslist and in the Portland paper, too, that he had found these keys,” Pennels said. “Sure enough, he finally tracked down the person that had lost the keys, and instead of dropping them in the mail, he got in the car and drove to South Portland just to deliver this woman her keys. To me, that says the kind of person that he is. He would do anything for anyone, even a complete stranger.”

She said she believes that her husband fell in love with public service after joining ROTC at the University of Oregon.

“I would say probably through the military that that’s where he started becoming interested in doing things for the community,” she said.

In the community at large, Pennels’ contributions to organizations such as the Sebago Lake Rotary Club are fondly remembered. Debbie McPhail, the president of the club, said that Pennels truly believed in Rotary’s mission.

“The Rotary’s motto is, ‘Service above self,’ and Toby was the epitome of that,” McPhail said. “He was always involved in any project that we had. As far as I’m concerned he was my mentor and hero.”

McPhail said that Pennels had co-chaired the club’s pizza-tasting fundraisers for the past four years. He also chaired the Sebago Lake Ice Fishing Derby this past winter.

“Last year when we didn’t have anybody to lead the derby, he stepped up to the plate to be the pivot man,” McPhail said. “Toby agreed as long as he could have a team and make the decisions. He was to make the decisions as far as the derby goes.”

McPhail said that it was Pennels, just before deployment to the Middle East, who had enlisted her to become the president of the club in 2008.

“Several years ago when I was past president he was on his way to Iraq and he took me aside and said, ‘We really want you to be president of the Rotary Club,’” McPhail said. “How I could say no when he was going to fight for our country?”

After Don Swander stepped down as the Windham Veterans Association president in 2012, Pennels was a logical choice to take over.

“He was already established and well known in Windham,” Swander said. “He was very comfortable as a public speaker. He was very respected in his role on the school committee, and as a member of the Rotary Club, and he was a person – you sit down and talk to him, and he listened and had thoughtful deliberation and he was able to make judgment calls based on what the results were. That was the kind of person we were looking for to be president and run the association.”

As president, Swander said, Pennels – a financial adviser – instituted several critical changes to improve the organization’s finances. One of the most critical was Pennels’ decision to move the association’s twice-monthly poker night fundraisers from the veterans hall to the Club 302 restaurant.

One of the association’s primary sources of revenue, Swander said, comes from renting out the veterans hall. Since Pennels convinced the ownership of Club 302 to host the poker nights at no charge, the association was able to increase revenues by renting out the hall during the times formerly occupied by the poker nights, Swander said.

“He was very knowledgeable about how to make changes like that that were going to benefit us,” Swander said. “We were doing very well under his leadership. He was very skillful at negotiating with people and having everybody come out feeling good about the whole thing.”

“He was a guy that could listen to both sides of an issue and come out with some very good advice as to how everybody won,” Swander said. “That put us in a much better position financially and also effectiveness, as far as the type of things that we were able to get done.”

Mike Duffy, who served on the Windham-Raymond school board with Pennels from 2001 to 2012, described him as a “class act.”

“Nothing comes to mind except for Toby being the ultimate professional,” Duffy said.

Duffy said that Pennels, an independent stock portfolio manager, devoted his financial expertise to the board.

“He was a financial genius. He knew the budget inside and out. He was very careful about the budget and how money was spent,” Duffy said.

On Wednesday, the Rotary Club held a blood drive at the North Windham Veterans Center in honor of Pennels.

“He lost 42 pints of blood in his accident, and we’re going to refurbish the blood supply in his honor,” McPhail said.

Brenda Pennels suggested that those who wish to donate money in her husband’s honor send money to the Toby Pennels Scholarship Fund at P.O. Box 735, Windham, Maine, or the Windham Veterans Center, located at P.O. Box 1776.

“He was beloved because he really was everyone’s friend, and he just did so much for our community,” she said. “I’m trying to figure out how some of these things in the town are going to happen without him.”

Blood drive organizer Debbie McPhail, president of the Sebago Lake Rotary Club, visits with her husband, Roy, as he donates a pint of blood. Dozens turned out to give blood in Toby Pennels’ honor Wednesday afternoon. American Red Cross employee Travis Masood assists Ralph Bartholomew, a Marine Corps veteran from the 1970s, at the end of his donation. Dozens turned out to give blood in Toby Pennels’ honor Wednesday afternoon.