2007
Virgil Homer Drissel, 96, a Washington native who served as an Army colonel in the Judge Advocate General's Corps, died May
5 of aortic stenosis at the Denver Hospice in Aurora, Colo., where he had lived since 2000.
Col. Drissel graduated in 1929 from McKinley High School, where he starred on the football, baseball and track teams. He was
captain of the 1929 baseball team.
At the University of Virginia, from which he graduated in 1934, Col. Drissel was a halfback and quarterback in football and was
co-captain of the baseball team. He also won the university table tennis championship in 1934.
He graduated from Georgetown University's law school in 1938, then worked for the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board. He joined
the Army in 1939 and was assigned to Fort Lee, Va., and Fort Devens, Mass., before entering the Judge Advocate General's
Corps in 1945. He served in Heidelberg and Stuttgart, Germany, in the 1940s and early '50s and later served in Japan.
After assignments in Georgia and Colorado, Col. Drissel returned to Washington in the mid-1960s as the Army's representative
on a tri-service board charged with reviewing and revising the military manual for courts-martial. He was also a member of an
Army judicial review board.
He received two awards of the Army Commendation Medal and the Legion of Merit. He retired in 1966.
Col. Drissel lived in San Antonio before moving to Colorado.
His first wife, Elizabeth Jane Drissel, whom he married in 1939, died in 1958.
His second wife, retired Army Lt. Col. Helen B. Drissel, whom he married in 1962, died in 2001.
Survivors include two children from his first marriage, Elizabeth Page of Denver and Geoffrey Drissel of Parker, Colo.; a sister,
Bea Lewis of Bethesda; five grandchildren; and one great-grandson.