Oswald (Barney) Stangl was born April 9, 1911, in Arcadia, Iowa, he was the 8th of 20 children born to John and Antoinette (Pille) Stangl. He was raised in Coon Rapids and attended school there. In 1941 he married Viola Joens and, with the outbreak of WWII, was sent to the South Pacific as a combat infantryman with the U.S. Army. A combat veteran of numerous campaigns against the Japanese throughout the South Pacific, he was commended for his part in the 1945 Battle of Bougainville where the Imperial Japanese Army's 6th Infantry Division, infamous for the 1937 Rape of Nanking atrocities, was annihilated. After the war, he settled his family in Manning, Iowa, and went into the tavern business, moving to Knoxville in 1951. He continued as a full-time bartender until the age of 86 and was a longstanding member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion. As owner and bartender of the former Tap & Grill in downtown Knoxville, he made history in 1963 by selling the first legal liquor served by the drink in Marion County since before Prohibition. A 1991 inductee into the Seagram's Bartender Hall of Fame, his friendly disposition and natural leadership ability were instrumental in his remarkable achievement of never having to call on law enforcement officials in over 55 years of bartending. He was a member of St. Anthony's Catholic Church in Knoxville since 1951 and often joked that as a bartender, he probably heard more confessions than most priests. While having only an 8th grade education himself, he was steadfast in inspiring all three of his children to earn university degrees.

Oswald died February 24th at the age of 96 at the Carlisle Care Center in Carlisle, Iowa.

In addition to his parents, he was preceded in death by his wife of 65 years, Viola; seventeen siblings: Adaline Neihaus, Clement Stangl, Clarence Stangl, Michael Stangl, Isabelle MacDonald, Caroline Smith, Louis Stangl, Clayton Stangl, Wilson Stangl, Billy Stangl, Janet Stam, Patrick Stangl and five others who died in infancy.

He is survived by his son, Larry (Lily) of Pittsburg, California; daughters, Beth Clarke (Gary) of Ames, Iowa, and Suzanne Stangl-Erkens (Joe) of Sauk Rapids, Minnesota; three grandchildren, David (Tina) Stangl, Aprille Clarke (Denny Crall), and Tyler Clarke; two great-grandchildren, Lisa Stangl and Miles Clarke Crall; and two sisters, Alice Broude of Los Angeles, California, and Marykay Mendez of Holly, Michigan.