Lindy Andeel, longtime Wichita real estate broker and investor, dies

Lindy Andeel helped build much of Wichita over the last 60 years, but he was more the mortar than the bricks.

Mr. Andeel was a real estate broker, investor and developer, the man behind a thousand deals. He was the guy who bought the land, the guy who renovated the building, the guy who found the buyer.

Much of his handiwork can be seen in the landscape stretching along East and West Kellogg, along Rock Road and West Street, but really throughout the city. He is perhaps best known as the longtime owner of the Scotch & Sirloin restaurant.

Mr. Andeel, 82, died Saturday at his home after a stroke. Services will be 10 a.m. Friday at Downing & Lahey, 6555 E. Central.

“You almost can’t find a piece of real estate that he didn’t do the deal on or have some knowledge of,” said Doug Maryott, a longtime business partner for Mr. Andeel.

Maryott said Mr. Andeel told him when they first met 18 years ago that he and his partners had never lost money on a deal.

“And, since then, I can’t think of one that lost money, although there were some we had to work really hard on to break even,” Maryott said.

Part of Mr. Andeel’s success came from the fact that he just really liked business and doing deals, said Nestor Weigand, who worked with or invested with Mr. Andeel on many deals over the decades.

“Lindy was the consummate entrepreneur and deal maker,” Weigand said. “I don’t know of anybody who enjoyed making deals like Lindy.”

He was born in Okmulgee, Okla., according to his wife, Linnie, where his parents, immigrants from what is now Lebanon, had opened a store. The family moved every few years to open stores where oil was discovered in other parts of the state. He was the oldest of six children.

“He loved to tell stories and jokes,” she said. “He’d tell stories repetitively, but we listened and would start smiling because we all knew the punch lines. He was just so excited about them and told them with such gusto.”

You could always count on him, she said. He was always on time and would do what he said he would do. People knew that if they wanted to find him after hours, he’d always be at the Scotch at 7 p.m. eating dinner.

What drove him, she said, was the pleasure and challenge of doing business.

“Money was just the way to keep track,” she said. “He wasn’t a bit spender. He was a modest man.”

Although, she said, he traveled extensively and loved cars.

He said he didn’t want a building named after him, she said. He could hardly stand any acknowledgment. He even downplayed his own success.

“Somebody once told him ‘Hey, you’re a big shot’ and he said ‘No. I’m a little shot that kept shooting.’”

This story was originally published April 6, 2015 at 5:26 PM with the headline "Lindy Andeel, longtime Wichita real estate broker and investor, dies."