03/17/2026
William Joseph "Bill" Knoll, Jr., age 67, passed away on March 15, 2026, after a long battle with illness. He was born in Waterloo, Iowa, but spent his early life living in LaPorte, Indiana with his siblings Mary, Peggy Ann, Brenda, and Steven, and his parents Sue and Jim Hickman.
After high school, Bill enlisted in the United States Air Force, quickly becoming a respected and talented mechanic who also distinguished himself as an excellent marksman. But for those who knew him he was, more than anything, an excellent crew chief, a loyal friend, and a man who would have fought a tiger with a pocket knife for his people. Over the years, his bold and adventurous spirit led him to a life of excitement and between his own volition and his USAF deployments, he traveled the world and lived enough for a half dozen lives of most anyone else.
In 1986 he met his future wife Peggy Butler, marrying in 1987 and becoming step-father to her children Daimon, Nathan and Heather. The couple had one son, James, in 1991. After 23 years of service and deployments that included such far-flung locales as Iceland, Okinawa, Panama, and England, as well as much of the United States, he retired from the USAF and moved on to the civilian aviation sector, where he worked as part of a wide variety of companies in Alaska, Chicago, and, starting in 2004, taking up work in Oklahoma City where he and his family moved. He joined the aviation maintenance contractor AAR, rising to the position of Chief Inspector, where he spent most of the rest of his career actively seeking to do his utmost to help his fellow night shift crewmates and to encourage and mentor those who needed his guidance.
Retiring in 2020, only mounting disabilities sustained during his time in the USAF and the economic realities of 2020 were enough to get him to finally take a much deserved break and spend the rest of his life in retirement, during which time he never stopped doing everything he could for those in his family. From supporting home renovation projects to having infinite patience with and joy for his grandchildren, from cross-country travel to car maintenance, even as his old injuries inhibited him he gave everything he did everything he had, all the time, and fought on well after most anyone else would have given up.
He was a devoted family man, known for his sharp sense of humor and ornery nature, and he was a born storyteller with a plethora of skills cultivated over his life. He earned marksmanship commendations time and again, was a three-time prize-winning dart champion at Grissom Air Force Base, and over the course of his life with his own hands maintained and tuned up countless motor vehicles, both his own and those of friends and family. He always had a keen eye and a problem-solving mentality; oftentimes it felt as if he could walk into any room with a problem and have a solution he'd already be working on in mere minutes. He was cool under pressure, once braving a venomous snake incursion into his home with the characteristic cool head that many knew him for in times of crisis or danger.
He had a curious mind and was always excited to learn about new things, to try out new technology, and this included his enthusiasm for photography and home video production. He was also an accomplished catcher in amateur softball games until his injuries prevented him from continuing to play, and perhaps most impressive of all, he was never prone to bragging about how incredible a life he lived. He would always deliver stories about some of the most fascinating things you'd ever heard as if they were a simple trip across the street taken last week.
His interests were simply too numerous to list in totality. It was as if a year of his life couldn't go past without ten new passions to explore for him, and he approached all of them with the same bright-eyed enthusiasm and joy as the rest. None who knew him could have known the full extent of everything he had done, even if he had chosen to spend a year straight trying to tell of them all. Depending on the year and the season, among many other things, he was a storyteller bar none; a hot-rodder; a jet skier; a biker; a baseball card and comic collector; a hunter; a fisherman; an explorer and traveler; a weightlifter; a brawler; a master of a charcoal grill; a repairman; an avid reader; a photographer; an amateur historian; a quick-learning student; an aficionado of a wide variety of films but especially Westerns; a concertgoer; a pool-shark; a bowler; a prize-winning dart-thrower; an amateur softball catcher; a model-builder; a hat collector; a board game enthusiast; and an early adopter of Dungeons and Dragons. He was the life of any party he attended, he exuded a cool demeanor and could instantly seize the attention of a room. But above and before everything else, he was always a devoted son, husband, father and friend who treated his family with even more love than he clearly had for everything else in his life. He was loyal to the end, and the funniest man in any room.
He was a beloved presence in the lives of practically everyone he met and will be missed by all whose lives he touched over his 67 years.
Bill is preceded in death by his father Jim Hickman; and sister Peggy Ann. He is survived by his mother Sue Hickman; his wife, Peggy; children James Knoll, Heather Witten, Nathan Lowery and Daimon Lowery; sisters Mary Ford and Brenda Zirzow; brother Steven Hickman; grandchildren London and Austin Rich; Payton, Kendall, Bailey and Jordan Lowery; Chase Lowery; great-grandson Ashton Gutierrez; and a great many other friends and loved ones.
Services will be held at McNeil's Funeral Service in Mustang, Oklahoma on Thursday, March 19th, 2026. Visitation will begin at 1 PM, and service will begin at 2 PM.
