Dancer Helen Howell Parnell of Maui, dead at 98

By Curtis Lum
Advertiser Staff Writer

Funeral services for Helen Howell Parnell, a member of the popular 1930s dance team Howell and Harger, will be held tomorrow at 10 a.m. at O'ahu Cemetery. Parnell, 98, died Aug. 16, 2001, in Mougins, France.

She was born Oct. 16, 1903, in Nahiku, Maui, one of six children of Hugh and Aukai Kapu Howell. She spent her youth in Nahiku, Ha'iku and Wailuku on Maui.

When she turned 15, her father sent her to San Francisco to live with his brother, John Howell Sr., and his wife, Rebecca, who had an interest in the theater and introduced Helen to professional dancing.

Helen Howell's instructor, Bert Harger, went on to become her dance partner and husband. Together they formed the acrobatic and adagio dance team Howell and Harger.

In the 1930s, the couple toured the United States and performed before royalty in Europe and England. In 1937, they performed at the popular Alexander Young Hotel Roof Garden in Honolulu.

Later that year, while on tour, Helen Howell met and fell in love with Val Parnell, an executive in a British theater chain and head of the famous London Palladium. She soon divorced Harger and married Parnell.

That marriage ended in the 1950s, and Helen Parnell moved to Antibes in the south of France. In the last six years of her life, she lived in a care home in Mougins, France.

She is survived by nieces and nephews, including Hawai'i residents Alan Peter Howell, Hugh Howell, Lauren Howell Avery, Mapuana DeSilva, Gail Howell Mason and Lynn Howell Sinard.

Services will be held tomorrow at the Howell family grave plot.