Friends praise Peanut Corp. chief Parnell

When the full story of Stewart Parnell and his company’s role in a nationwide salmonella outbreak is told, his friends said the story also will show him as a good businessman, a Bedford County dad and grandfather, and a caring man who never would hurt anyone.

They said that the media have taken Parnell’s words out of context and misinterpreted his silence, showing him as a tycoon who shipped poisoned peanut products and plunged the nation into a salmonella outbreak.

“The Stewart Parnell I know would never knowingly … sell anything that he thought to be harmful,” said Susan Damon, a broker in California who said she worked for Parnell’s Peanut Corporation of America for 30 years. “I think there’s just got to be more to the story. … He’s not the monster that he’s portrayed to be.”

A family friend said the Parnell family has been hurt by the fallout from the salmonella outbreak.

“They’re troubled by the media coverage that has put them in such a bad light with the public — and that’s all the public knows,” said Ralph Jackson, of Lynchburg. “Just like everything else, there is always two sides to everything.”

Parnell founded PCA in Lynchburg in the 1970s along with his father. Jackson was the family’s pastor at Sandusky Baptist Church for some time. Later, as an aviation inspector, he helped them practice flying — Stewart Parnell is a pilot — and went on some business trips with them.

“They’re regular people that have families,” Jackson said. “Their family has always just been their life.”

Jackson said he does not know how many children Parnell has, but he remembers him being an active part of their lives. He was involved with his children’s school, and came to his daughters’ basketball games, he said.

He said Parnell has an infant granddaughter who is “the pie of his eye.”

The Parnell family hired Damon shortly after starting PCA. She worked to sell their end products to accounts on the West Coast and stayed with the company until last week, when it filed for bankruptcy.

She said Parnell is not a liar. In fact, he sometimes charged less for products than he probably could have.

“He’d give you the shirt off his back,” she said.

David Charnock, who lives on Tangier Island on the Chesapeake Bay, sees that side of Parnell regularly.

A disabled cancer patient, Charnock relies on free air transportation to Norfolk for treatments. Parnell, who has been a pilot for decades, volunteers for those flights through a program called Angel Flight Mid-Atlantic.

“He’s just as nice as he could be. He’d do anything for you,” Charnock said.

Mark Borel, a Lynchburg developer, used to live near Parnell. “He’s a great guy,” Borel said. “He’s very charitable, active in the community. He’s just an all-around good guy, supportive. When I see him on TV, I just can’t believe it.”

A congressional hearing in Washington, D.C., last week painted Parnell in a different color. Representatives read e-mails that Parnell had sent, telling employees to ship out products that had tested positive for salmonella once but tested negatively later. Another e-mail, written while federal officials were inspecting PCA’s plant in Georgia, said that “(we) desperately at least need to turn the raw peanuts on our floor into money.”

Damon said that doesn’t mean Parnell was concerned only with profits. “He’s president of a company that he has to keep afloat while the investigation was going on,” she said. “I think at that point he was asking if he could please continue operating this plant. … He had materials on the floor that he would like to get into production.”

Jackson said he watched parts of the congressional hearing last week, and he said Parnell’s e-mails could have been taken out of context.

Parnell had the chance to put things into context at the hearing. However, he refused to answer questions, as he also has refused news interviews, on advice from his lawyer. Members of his family also have turned down interview requests.

“I think the fact that Stewart was told not to speak, that hurt him in a way,” said Jackson. “People say, ‘well, he must be guilty.’”

Jackson said he’s confident a court case with judge and jury would reveal more facts and show the true Parnell.

“Thank God we have a society (where) we are really innocent until proven guilty,” he said.

- Media General News Service contributed.