Investigated for some financial irregularities related to his public office, Nowell pleaded no contest and was fined for a violation of a campaign-reporting law.

They had three children, Julie, Jim and John, and since 1945 lived at 10205 Scoville Avenue in the Sunland district of the northeast San Fernando Valley.

A Los Angeles Times reporter wrote of him: Without the university degrees that open doors to executive positions, winning his way from a 65 cents a day job thinning sugar beets in Utah to election to City Council .

[3] Nowell was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council District 1 in 1963 to succeed Everett G. Burkhalter; he placed second in the April primary to attorney Phill Silver.

In 1973 Nowell was subject to a forceful opposition campaign led by Gerald and Betty Decter (below), who sent out thousands of anti-Nowell brochures and fliers to District 1 voters.

[13] Columnist Al Martinez of the Los Angeles Times wrote of the Decters in 1977: With little help and with a dedication rare among private citizens, they pursued Nowell for a decade, and in the end brought him down with a series of revelations that reduced the once powerful legislator to tears.

[15] Nowell and his family purchased a 51-foot or 57-foot schooner named Sharolyn or Sharon in Hawaii and, with eight relatives, sailed it in 1972 from the islands to San Pedro.

The boat was out of contact for 24 days until it was sighted by a Japanese freighter, and it arrived in Santa Barbara with just five gallons of fuel left.

[17] The Decters learned that Nowell had docked his schooner at a city pier in the Port of Los Angeles, but not paid a cent for doing so.

A Los Angeles Times investigation found that Nowell had also been receiving services by Harbor Department employees aboard his yacht.

[14][17][18] After his retirement, Nowell and his wife moved first to Kernville in Kern County and then to Marina Del Rey, where they lived aboard their schooner.

[19] Nowell was fined $500 and placed on a year's probation in 1974 for failing to properly report $19,700 received in a 1972 fund-raising dinner aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach.

[21] Betty and Jerry Decter, with Warren Kessler, asked District Attorney John Van de Kamp to charge Nowell and the Pacific Outdoor Advertising Company with corrupt practices for Nowell's accepting room, food and beverages for him and his wife "at the fashionable Hotel Playa de Bucerias" in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.