Lee Ronnel (1936–2022)

Lee Ronnel, a prominent philanthropist, businessman, and civic leader, immigrated to the United States from Shanghai, China, at the age of eleven. In 1979, he founded Metal Recycling Corporation in Little Rock (Pulaski County). It grew to have a total of ninety employees at three central Arkansas locations and two metal commodities trading companies.

Lee Ronnel was born Elias Itkis on June 16, 1936, in Shanghai. His parents were professional musicians, each of whom had fled their Russian homeland to escape the Bolshevik Revolution. His father Leo Itkis, at the age of seventeen, was the piano accompanist with the touring Kiev Ballet. After a performance in Harbin, a city in northern China, he and the entire ballet troupe defected. A few years later, Lee’s father settled in Shanghai, where he performed as a concert pianist, guest conductor of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, and leader of a band playing nightly on the rooftop of the tallest building in China. In Shanghai, he met and married Dora Paley, who had studied piano in Harbin after escaping Russia with her parents. Lee was their only child.

During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, when Lee was six years old, his father died unexpectedly following surgery. His mother earned money for their support by working in a music store and teaching piano lessons. Lee conversed with his mother in Russian and with his friends in Chinese and English. Growing up, Lee received piano lessons from his mother, keeping a promise that she had made to her husband before his death.

In 1948, after the war, his mother remarried a U.S. Army officer, Eliot Ronnel, who was assisting in the reconstruction of Shanghai. Lee took his stepfather’s surname. That same year, the family moved to a town near New York City. Lee became an American citizen, a lifelong source of pride for him. In high school, he played piano in a dance band and performed as a piano soloist with the local symphony but did not wish to become a professional musician.

Lee paid for college by obtaining an Air Force Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) scholarship at New York University, where he earned a degree in industrial management. During his ROTC summer training in Greenville, Mississippi, he met his future wife, Dale Grundfest, who grew up in Rolling Fork, Mississippi. They were married in 1960 while Lee was on active duty, stationed at the air base in Waco, Texas. Later, he was the navigator on flights to the Far East from the air base in Tacoma, Washington.

Upon Lee’s retirement from the U.S. Air Force in 1964 with the rank of captain, he and Dale moved to Little Rock. He was employed by a scrap metal company owned by Dale’s uncle. In 1979, he resigned to open Metal Recycling Corporation.

Lee was an avid tennis player, although he devoted most of his spare time and money to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) and the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra (ASO). He served as chairman of the UAMS Foundation Fund Board and the University of Arkansas Foundation, funding scholarships for medical students and research. UAMS honored him with lifetime membership on its Board of Advisors. Befitting his family’s musical legacy, he served as chairman and lifetime member of the ASO Board. Together with his wife, he was given the Governor’s Patron of the Arts Award.

In addition, Lee served on the board of directors of the Gulf Coast chapter of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries and received its Lifetime Achievement Award. He also chaired the board of the Jewish Federation of Arkansas, using his fluency in Russian to help recent immigrants get settled in the state, and received its Lifetime Achievement Award.

Lee and Dale had three children: Karen, Mike, and Steve. Several years before his death, his business interests were purchased and carried forward by his two sons. He died on January 29, 2022, and his will provided major bequests to UAMS, the ASO, and Temple B’nai Israel, a Jewish congregation in Little Rock.

For additional information:
Bowden, Bill. “Lee Ronnel, Little Rock Philanthropist, Metal-Recycling Magnate, Dies at 85.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 31, 2022. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2022/jan/31/lee-ronnel-little-rock-philanthropist-metal/ (accessed April 7, 2026).

Obituary of E. Lee Ronnel. Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, January 30, 2022, p. 1K.

Traub, Todd. “Dale and Lee Ronnel Recount Personal Histories, Love of the Arkansas Symphony.” Little Rock Soiree, October 29, 2018. https://www.littlerocksoiree.com/dale-and-lee-ronnel-recount-personal-histories-love-of-the-arkansas-symphony/ (accessed April 7, 2026).

Richard A. Williams
Little Rock, Arkansas