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ERNEST MONROE NEELY November 22, 1879 - April 12,1937 - 57 years old
By William Warren "Bill" Neely, Jr., June 2002.
Introduction
Ernest and Jessie Neely have four descendants: their son (William Warren Neely), two grandchildren (William Warren Neely, Jr. and Leslie Anne Neely Bollinger), and a great-grandson (Craig William Neely). See the family tree following this essay for spouses and additional information. Ernest's son is our best source for the kind of family history that isn't in official records. Since the main source's son is writing this narrative, the reader will see William Warren Neely referred to as Dad most of the time. "Warren" was Dad's nickname when he was growing up in Tucson. When he went to the Naval Academy in 1937, his fellow cadets called him "Bill" and that became a new nickname. Older family members continued to call him Warren, however, and some of the Will Neely descendants will have heard of him by that name. I became interested in genealogy and family history in the early 1980s and soon found that I would have a rough time piecing together the Neely story. Ernest had said very little to Warren about his parents and his early life and my dad had picked up Ernest's tendency to focus on current business. So my questions to Dad about the past initially received a number of "I don't remember.", "I don't think I ever knew." and "Who would be interested in that?" responses. As he has thought about it more, however, Dad has helped me piece together a lot of almost forgotten but interesting information that nicely complements what I have been able to find in documents. I've also had help along the way from several Neely cousins that I hadn't previously met. In this chapter I have focused on generations 7 and 8 but have included enough information on generations 9 and 10 to round out the picture of the family.
Ernest Monroe Neely was born November 22, 1879 in Blount County, Alabama, less than a year before his father's death in Limestone, County and his mother's return to Blount County. I'm sure Ernest's boyhood in rural Alabama had its good points. High on the list would have been the large extended family of his mother Sarah's relatives and neighbors (Hoods, Scotts, Beesons, Nations, Keens, Chorons, Culbreaths, Bynums, and Raileys among others). Without her mother, Rachel (Scott) Hood, and this group of extended family, Sarah might have found it impossible to provide basic necessities for her family; even the small children like Ernest must have been aware of the problems. Sarah's remarriage to Jack Nation took place when Ernest was five and the difficulties that led to the breakup of that marriage when he was about thirteen or fourteen also undoubtedly made a strong impression on him. As has been mentioned earlier, Ernest moved to Ellis County, Texas about 1893 with his mother, grandmother, and several of his siblings. All the Neelys of this generation had a common experience of adversity and all seem to have reacted with a quiet determination to not use it as an excuse and, instead, to simply get on with the business of providing for and raising families of whom they could be proud.
A new direction
In Ernest's case this determination seems to have included not only concentrating on what schooling he could get in Alabama and in Ellis and Johnson counties in Texas and helping with the family's farming efforts but also looking for a chance to start on a new and different career. In the 1890s one of the most attractive careers for a teenager like Ernest to think about was railroading (and he along with the rest of the Neelys had, of course, become more aware of the railroads as they moved by train from Alabama to Texas). Being an engineer for one of the major railroads then held out many of the same promises of travel, mastery of modern machinery, and good pay as, fifty to seventy years later, became associated with being an airline pilot. The railroads could afford to be choosy in selecting operating crews precisely because of the jobs' attractiveness. But the jobs were there and the opportunity to apply for them probably existed not far from Ellis and Johnson counties. "Out West" in sparsely settled Arizona and New Mexico, railroads like the Southern Pacific were still expanding at a great pace and, consequently, were recruiting in more populous areas such as East Texas to fill the newly created jobs.
Dallas was a major railway hub. The Texas & Pacific, which ran through Dallas was a Southern Pacific partner in creating southern rail routes that connected the South and Midwest to California. The SP probably had an agent in Dallas. Fireman was the entry job to get because, at least on the Southern Pacific, that was the normal route to apprentice as an engineer. Whether Ernest applied for the job in Dallas or simply took a chance and went to Arizona because he had heard the SP was hiring, the June 1900 census shows he was successful — it lists Ernest as a twenty year old fireman for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Tucson. Ernest thus became the first of the Neelys to move to Arizona. In the 1900 census Ernest is recorded as living with a railroad engineer's family and a couple of other railroad employee lodgers near the Tucson rail yards. Dad remembers one of the lodgers as still being a family friend more than thirty years later. Exactly when Ernest became an engineer himself isn't clear. Dad says he can't remember Ernest talking about a time when he wasn't already an engineer. In those early days of rapid rail expansion, this important step up may have taken Ernest only a few years to make.
Marriage and family.
Ernest met Jessie Ella Vaughan while visiting her home town of Moody, McLennan Co., Texas about 1904. The details are lost but Jessie's brother, Harvey Richmond "Rich" Vaughan, also worked for the Southern Pacific in Tucson and apparently invited Ernest to go with him when he went home for Christmas holidays that year. (Ernest and Rich would have been able to travel to Moody inexpensively using their railroad company passes which allowed them free coach travel not just on the SP but on many other lines. Ernest may also have used the trip as a rare opportunity to see some of his relatives in Texas; despite having the pass, his work would have usually kept him fully occupied in Arizona.) Jessie's grandparents and parents had arrived in Texas during the period 1853 to 1877 (her maternal grandparents were part of the first wagon train to arrive in the area with settlers from Georgia in 1853) and were well established in Moody. The Vaughans, Christians, and Connallys were Methodists and descendants of families that had been in Virginia and the Carolinas since the early 1700s before starting to move further south and then west. Jessie's father, Pickens Postelle "P.P." Vaughan, was a manager of the local dry goods store. Jessie and Ernest were married in Moody, Texas, September 10, 1905 after which they traveled back to Tucson to rent a small house south of the rail yards and begin life together.
Even though they were living on the usual newlyweds' tight budget, Ernest had a job that already paid reasonably well and which promised to get better as his seniority as an engineer increased. The SP selected a group of engineers as their cadre for operations out of each of their railway hubs or division points but didn't pay them a set wage. Instead, earnings were determined by the individual engineers bidding, based on seniority, on particular runs and then receiving the compensation designated for those runs. So, the more seniority the greater the chance of getting higher paying runs or, if that was the individual's priority, easier runs with better hours and less time away from home. Many of Ernest's early runs would have been those with low compensation, such as driving the extra or "helper" locomotives that were added to heavily laden east bound trains to get them up the steep grade from Tucson to Benson, Arizona, but he would also have had a growing share of the longer haul trains going to the west through Yuma or to the east through Lordsburg, New Mexico. In any case, railroaders considered Tucson to be a good place to be based because it was a growing city with a range of stores, medical facilities, schools (including the University of Arizona, founded in 1891), libraries, etc. Many other SP division points were far less favored (for example, another of Jessie's brothers, Postelle Connally Vaughan, later had to move to that notorious hot spot, Yuma, because he had insufficient SP seniority to stay fully employed in Tucson. (As a side observation on Yuma's heat, the railroader's boarding house in Yuma, where Ernest usually stayed overnight when working on Tucson-Yuma-Tucson runs, was nicknamed "The Cage" because it was so uncomfortable despite an odd interior arrangement designed to allow a couple of big exhaust fans to pull air through the building.)
As the years went by, Ernest got more of the better paying runs and he and Jessie were able to move to a little larger house. About 1915 they bought their first car, an open-top Buick (about 1926 it was replaced by a larger Buick). In early January 1919 Ernest and Jessie's first, and only, child William Warren Neely, was born at home at 744 S. 3rd Ave. When Warren was about five the family made the move to the house he remembers best, at 334 S. 6th Ave. It was a two story brick building near the Carnegie Library and close to the center of town.
Dorothy Anne (Thurman) Neely, once asked Jessie to describe what Ernest, her husband, was like and she replied that he was "stern but a good provider." Jessie meant that as a more favorable comment than it might appear now, meaning primarily that taking care of his family was his first priority and that he worked seriously at it. Dad's impression was that Ernest became an engineer not because of any glamour attached to railroading but because it offered more, and more reliable, pay than what he was likely to be able to make in farming. Ernest never expressed any dislike for farming; it was just that he thought that railroading offered a better return for his hard work - and he was a hard worker. Ernest always chose the railway runs with the best compensation even if that meant night runs, more time away from home, and more physical labor. In the 1930s, for example, Ernest regularly bid for a two night/one day local run to Phoenix and return which was well paid but considered undesirable by most of the other high-seniority engineers because most of the work was at night and involved constant starts and stops and hard labor, going into and out of sidings picking up goods and railcars from various packing plants and other establishments in the area. He also took many runs with the well-known SP trains — the Sunset Limited and the Argonaut going through on their way to and from New Orleans, the Golden State Limited to and from Chicago, and the Pacific Fruit Express trains carrying iced California citrus for eastern cities. The railroads stayed fairly busy through the 1930s and did not cut employees as much as many industries. Although Dad remembers many engines, Locomotive #1673 is a Schenectady Locomotive Works mogul M-4 built for the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1900, the same year that Ernest Neely began working for the SP as a fireman in Tucson. This engine was in service, primarily on freight runs, in Southern Arizona throughout Ernest's career and he most likely operated it from time to time. The locomotive originally burned coal but was later converted to oil. It has been restored and is on public display in Tucson older locomotives idled in the Tucson rail yards. Ernest's seniority and his continuous effort on runs such as the hard working local night train were key to the family in weathering the Depression. As a result, Dad says that he was mainly aware of the Depression because some of his friends' fathers lost their jobs. Otherwise he knew that his family and his neighbors watched what they spent very carefully, but then he thought most people in Tucson had been doing that before the 1930s.
Although Ernest largely stuck to being a railroad engineer, starting in the early 1920s he had enough savings to be interested in investments. The house on 3rd Ave. and later the house on 6th Ave. were purchased rather than rented and, based on referrals from his bank, Ernest began buying and managing a number of mortgages. Dad's impression was that the bank kept the best mortgages but that the ones they made available to Ernest were still modestly profitable, even though Ernest sometimes had problems collecting payments. Dad can remember Ernest working on his fairly extensive account books when he was home from his railroad runs and commenting on which investments were going well, or not so well. Like his siblings, Ernest's educational opportunities had been limited while he was growing up but Dad says that he spoke well and seemed able to easily handle the paperwork of his investments and job. Ernest didn't become involved seriously in the property speculation of the late 1920s period but did make one high-risk investment that Dad remembers. He bought some land just to the north of Tucson (beyond the Rillito River) from a developer who had drilled wells, planted orange trees, and begun selling surrounding plots of desert land for orange groves. The area eventually went back to desert when the limited ground water ran out, but Ernest was fortunate in that a couple of other local investors persuaded him to sell his part of the land to them before the wells ran dry; so he made a small amount of money and avoided a big loss.
As for being "stern", Warren remembers him as serious about the business of life and intent on "getting on with it" but that he was no more stern, or strict as a father, than was the norm at the time. Dad's comment, however, was that the norm in those days was established by people like our family who were working their way up from difficult economic circumstances and that they simply took life fairly seriously most of the time. Ernest also was known as a scrupulously honest "straight shooter" among his railroad associates. For example, during the early 1930s when the SP engineers decided they needed legal representation in a dispute between SP and the governments of Arizona and California about the allowed length of trains, Ernest was picked to collect and account for the scarce Depression-era dollars and dimes contributed by the engineers to pay the lawyer. A family discussion that Dad remembers concerning Prohibition provides another small insight into Ernest and Jessie's thinking. Jessie actively advocated Prohibition and, on this occasion, strongly criticized the Tucson sheriff who was reported to have tolerated drinking after a local rodeo. Dad says that Ernest didn't express himself as strongly as Jessie about the overall desirability of Prohibition but was firm on the point that it should definitely be adhered to simply because it was the law.
Although Ernest belonged to the Elks and took part in a few other off-duty activities, his major non-railroading interest was hunting, largely desert or Mexican quail. He would take either a buckboard or, after 1915, sometimes the Buick, out into the desert hunting whenever he could. Claude Ernest Neely's son, Robert, says that one of the stories that Claude told about his younger years was of visiting his Uncle Ernest about 1920, going into the desert with him in the buckboard hunting quail, and being taken into custody by the local game warden for hunting on land belonging to a nearby Indian reservation (probably near San Xavier Mission). The warden had Ernest and Claude get up on the buckboard's driving seat and start it towards Tucson while he sat in the rear. According to the story, when Ernest noticed that the warden had made himself comfortable by sitting facing to the rear with his legs dangling behind the buckboard, he whispered to Claude to take the reins and whip the horses into a run. As Claude did so, Ernest reportedly gave the warden a push, leaving him in the dust. It is a fun story, but Ernest's character (serious, upright local citizen, probably very aware that the warden could find him in Tucson if he wanted to) makes one wonder if the story may not have gained a little in the telling. Dad has no memory of the incident being mentioned by Ernest or Jessie. One thing is sure ~ it correctly portrays Ernest's interest in quail hunting.
Another family activity was facilitated by Ernest's rail pass. Most years they went on a trip (timed to at least break up, if not escape, Tucson's summer heat) to a southern California beach. By 1910, Ernest and Jessie were occasionally traveling to Ocean Park and Santa Monica for a short vacation. From the mid-1920s through the mid-1930s Jessie and Warren would go to Long Beach for several weeks in the summer and Ernest would join them towards the end of their stay. Occasionally, they would ride the SP as far north as Oregon before returning to Tucson.
Ernest and Jessie's location in Tucson put both of them far away from their families in the early years of their marriage, so visits such as Claude's would have been rare. Much of Jessie's family, however, eventually moved to Tucson or other nearby towns in Arizona, particularly after her father died in 1915 in Moody, Texas. In addition to his dry goods store job, P.P. had a few cows and had a heart attack one evening while in the fields taking care of the cows. Later, Ernest sometimes remarked on his belief that the heart attacks of men in that generation ~ and in his own generation ~ were the result of continuing a hearty farm diet, with lots of cream gravy for example, after the point where many jobs had become less physically demanding. Will Neely's family moved to the Phoenix area from Barstow in 1922 , and Fairye Madora Neely got a job at a bank in Tucson about 1923. Contacts were quickly re-established between the two brothers and their families. Fairye was a frequent dinner guest at Ernest and Jessie's house when my father was growing up, and the Ernest Neelys sometimes stopped at Will and Ulah's house in Gilbert to visit, to drop off or pick up Fairye when she wanted to visit there, or to have my dad stay with Will and Ulah while they were attending events in Phoenix.
Despite his active lifestyle and his awareness of diet, Ernest had a heart attack in April 1937 while on a run from Tucson to New Mexico. His crew brought the locomotive back to Tucson but Ernest was dead by the time it pulled in. My father was seventeen at the time and had recently gone to Washington, DC to get himself ready for entering the Naval Academy that June. Jessie soon moved across town to stay with her mother, Ella Connally Vaughan. In about 1940 Jessie moved to Long Beach, California which she had come to really enjoy during the family's summer visits. She bought a set of four town house/apartments near the beach, lived in one and rented the other three for retirement income. She also met and married a retired businessman, George Thomas Allen, in 1943. George died in 1947 and she continued living in Long Beach until health and memory problems required her to come and live with our family at Fort Sill, Oklahoma in 1957. While the family was stationed in Germany in the early 1960s, her medical situation deteriorated further and Dad flew back with her to a medical center in Tucson where one of her sisters and other relatives still lived and could visit regularly. I visited her there on my way to graduate school in California not too long before her death on June 1, 1964, and she was very happy to see me, although she was convinced that I was Warren (Dad). Of course I didn't argue and we had a good visit. She and Ernest are buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Tucson.
Warren's life in Tucson
Some of the basics of Dad's youth in Tucson have already been mentioned as part of Ernest's story but there is more to be said. Much of his early life centered on the house on 6th Ave. and on his parents, particularly his mother who cooked well but simply. Her specialty was cakes and pies, cooking up several each week. There were neighbors' kids and family or neighbors' pets; Dad has a number of stories about Hidalgo the neighbor's cat who made a habit of visiting whenever Jessie was baking pies. He went off to Sunday school each week at the Methodist Episcopal Church and started grade school — all the normal growing up activities in what was an expanding but still comfortable-size town. When he was about eight Ernest bought Warren a .22 cal. bolt action rifle (which later was passed on to me and then to my son, Craig) which looks only a little shorter than Warren in the earliest pictures of it. After that Dad regularly accompanied Ernest on his hunting trips and got to be a good shot with the .22 (and later with Ernest's shotguns). When he was about nine a neighbor and fellow railroad man, Mr. Burgess, went with them in the Buick north of Mt. Lemon. They stopped in Oracle Junction for an orange soda and began hunting in the high desert to the northwest of there. The adults concentrated on quail and Dad looked for jackrabbits and cottontails. After a while a big cottontail took a flying leap from cover and Dad shot him through the head with the .22 in mid-jump — Mr. Burgess was very impressed and repeated the story for a long time afterwards.
Family played an important role in his life. His mother's relatives were frequent visitors and so was Fairye Neely. Fairye's place in a small boy's memories was initially secured by the fact that she made chocolate cherries for him that were "just like store bought". Dad also liked visiting her small homestead in the Silverbell area, in the desert just northwest of Tucson. It had a small cabin on it and lots of holes from previous mining attempts which were fun to investigate but you had to walk carefully to avoid falling into one of them. Other Will Neely descendants visited Fairye for short and longer periods of time, encouraging a broader range of family contacts. For example, Cullen (Roy) and Wastella (Neely) Cornett's family visited for several weeks in 1929 or 1930 while they were moving from Texas to Arizona. To ease the crowding in Fairye's house, Bill Cornett, the oldest boy, stayed with Ernest's family and he and Warren did a number of things together. One day Fairye (trustingly) lent her new Chevrolet to 14 or 15 year old Bill so he and Warren could drive out to the Silverbell homestead for the day. Dad was 10 or 11 at the time and remembers Bill explaining all the features of the Chevrolet; a good day was had by both and the Chevrolet returned intact. Leota "Otie" Neely stayed with Fairye for a time in the late 1920s while she was attending the University of Arizona, and essentially became a member of the Tucson Neelys until she and a fellow University of Arizona student, Orval Knox, married. Miles "Red" Neely also attended the University of Arizona and stayed with Fairye, but for only part of one semester. Dad has many memories of them and of meeting other members of the Will Neely family at Will and Ulah's house in Gilbert. Dad sometimes stayed overnight with Will and Ulah when his parents had business in Phoenix and enjoyed it thoroughly. Like the other visiting relatives, he slept on the screened porch and helped with chores. Among his miscellaneous memories: hunting for eggs in the hayloft with Ulah and the fact that his favorite song on Ulah's Victrola was "Oh, them Golden Slippers!".
Warren had a number of jobs while he was growing up. He delivered the afternoon paper The Tucson Citizen on his bike after school and, later, sold magazines such as Collier's and Liberty (including selling them in the several tuberculosis sanitariums in Tucson — probably at some health risk). These, along with the morning Tucson paper The Arizona Daily Star that the family subscribed to, books from the Carnegie library just two blocks away, and school books all gave Warren good sources for news and education. Dad progressed through the local schools smoothly with just the normal memories of school events and favorite teachers. One was his Safford Junior High School Shop Teacher, Charley Dietz, who had a woodworking shop across the street from the school; Dad still has a cedar box he made in the class.
Another new direction. When Warren was in his final year of High School he started to think about college. Ernest and Jessie had no experience of this, of course, and didn't really offer very many thoughts on what Dad should do. One family friend encouraged him to go to the University of Arizona and study engineering; he thought Dad should specialize in air conditioning equipment (you can see why, living in Arizona!) but Dad wasn't excited by the idea. It happened that one of their neighbors was a local judge who had managed to help both of his sons get admitted to the US Naval Academy a few years earlier. Dad knew of their success and it started him thinking about seeing if he could go there himself. Annapolis was a long way from Tucson both geographically and in terms of the kind of college and future career that most of his contemporaries were contemplating. It shows quite a bit of initiative on his part that he explored on his own all the requirements and procedures for qualifying academically and applying for one of Arizona's couple of slots each year. Further, he located a school in Washington, D.C. (Randall's) that specialized in preparing young men for Annapolis. Ernest and Jessie said they would pay for him to go to Randall's and Dad took the train east to Washington in July 1936. It was a significant expense for the family and taking a chance on his being successful in the stiff competition for an Academy slot. Definitely it was the end of one phase of the family's life as Ernest died and Jessie moved out of the 6th Ave. house while he was at Randall's.
Dad took his competitive exams in Dec.'36 - Jan.'37 and was successful in getting a Naval Academy appointment. After passing further tests and a physical exam during the spring he entered Annapolis as a Plebe in June 1937. He has many great memories of the Academy including summer training cruises on battleships to Europe and the Caribbean as well as sailing on the Chesapeake. With the approach of World War II all of the academies accelerated their classes and Dad's class graduated in January instead of June 1941. While at the Academy he had met the daughter of an Army family stationed at the War College in Washington, D.C, Dorothy Anne "Anne" Thurman, and they were looking forward to being married that summer. The concentrated academics of his last year at the Academy strained Dad's eyesight, however, and he couldn't quite pass the final vision exam for a Navy commission. The doctors said that his eyesight almost certainly would return to normal (as it did) but couldn't say exactly how long it would be before he could be commissioned in the Navy. This could have been a big problem but in those days a number of Naval Academy graduates took commissions with the U.S. Army Coast Artillery whose big guns and range finding systems were essentially the same as were found on battleships. The Army offered Dad an immediate regular commission which he accepted.
Marriage, career and family. Now officially started on his military career and with WWII looming closer, Dad and Mom were married August 16, 1941 in the Post Chapel at Fort Myer, Virginia. Mother's background was an interesting contrast with Dad's. Her mother's parents were Episcopalians and "proper Bostonians" whose ancestors (Fitchs and Chickerings) arrived with the earliest English Puritan settlers of Connecticut and Massachusetts in the 1620s and 1630s. Her grandfather was a prosperous wool merchant. Her father's family was from Georgia; he was a cavalry officer who had died in 1927 at Fort Bliss, Texas. Her step-father was an infantry officer who was soon to be promoted to Major General (he formed the 94th Infantry Division in 1942 and led it against the Nazis through France and into Germany under General Patton's command).
Dad's first assignment was to join a small group of officers being trained at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the use of a then highly secret weapon — radar. The young couple spent the early years of WWII going up and down the eastern seaboard while dad trained local Coast Artillery installations in using their newly installed radar sets. Housing was tight and Anne got used to a succession of rented rooms and housekeeping in cramped circumstances. Some of her favorite stories of these early days were of trying to duplicate meals that dad remembered his mother cooking, but generally couldn't remember any recipes or enough specifics to be helpful. For example, Dad mentioned that he liked his mother's fried potatoes, so she repeatedly went through the labor of deep frying French fries (the only fried potatoes she knew anything about) in her tiny, makeshift "kitchen" without getting any really enthusiastic comments from Dad. When she finally asked whether he liked them, he admitted he had been puzzled by her efforts. Finally the light dawned and he explained that what his mother cooked were American pan-fried potatoes which were a lot easier to cook and more to his taste if only Anne had known.
I, William Warren "Bill" Neely, Jr., was born May 24, 1942 during a six week stay by my parents at Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey (so I can't really say I'm from New Jersey — I'm an "Army brat"). The family travels continued through the war years with short stays in Riviera Beach, West Palm Beach and Lake Worth, Florida as well as Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina. In 1943 Dad was assigned to a unit in Ft. Bliss, Texas, and Jessie traveled from California in February to visit us. In January 1945 we traveled to Long Beach, visited Jessie again, and waved good-bye to Dad when he boarded a Navy transport bound for the Pacific War. Mother and I spent the remainder of the war with her relatives in Newton Center, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
Dad joined General Douglas MacArthur's command and served on the G-2 (intelligence) staff in New Guinea and the Philippine Islands during MacArthur's campaigns against the Japanese in the Philippines and through the remainder of the war. He was promoted to Major and became the Assistant G-2 of the Philippine Islands/Ryukus Command (later Army Forces Western Pacific). At the end of World War II he remained in Manila (Quezon City) and, in early July 1946, mother and I stepped aboard a Navy transport in California ourselves as part of the first shipload of military dependents to travel to the Philippines. A Boston newspaper article identified us as the first family from New England to be allowed to go out to the recently liberated islands. Our new home was one of a number of hastily constructed tarpaper and wood temporary buildings. With their kerosene-fueled refrigerators and makeshift wiring, they were just waiting to catch on fire, and often did. Manila was in ruins and Japanese soldiers were still being captured nearby. A major Communist insurgency against the Philippine government was underway and sometimes resulted in fighting in the immediate vicinity. It was all impressive to me as a very young boy and, probably as a result, I have far more detailed memories of the period than I would have if we had been living in a more "normal" situation. In 1947 we returned to the United States after a month long voyage that included abruptly awakening in the middle of the night when our transport ran aground on a small island near Yokohama, Japan. The ship struck so hard that it ended up almost completely out of the water. We were taken off the island in a landing craft and eventually continued our trip on another transport. The rest of the trip was more pleasant, including a stop in Hawaii.
Back in the United States, Dad attended a training course at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, where we added a Cocker Spaniel puppy "Goldie" to the family who later went with us to Japan, Germany, and many places in the US — a much traveled and patient dog. Dad then became an ROTC instructor at Texas A&M, primarily teaching anti-aircraft artillery courses. One of Madora Neely's grandsons, Hollis Fitzhugh Pinyan, Jr., was a cadet at A&M at the time but apparently they didn't meet, or at least didn't recognize that they were related. We lived in a newly built subdivision in nearby College Station from 1948 to 1951. In 1950 the North Koreans had invaded South Korea and Dad received orders to join the 1st Cavalry Division in Korea. He was named to command the 99th Field Artillery Battalion (105mm towed howitzers) and was subsequently promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. His unit provided close fire support for the 1st Cavalry's battles along the 38th parallel. Mother and I moved to northern Virginia to be near her mother and step-father while Dad was overseas. In the summer of 1952 the 1st Cavalry was rotated back to its base in Hokkaido, Japan for rest, recuperation, and training. Mother and I took a train across the US and boarded another Navy transport in Fort Lawton, Washington for the trip to Japan to join Dad. Hokkaido was quite undeveloped then and, during the long snowy winter, the little villages gave the impression of being somewhere in Siberia hundreds of years ago, which left me with lots of interesting memories. While we were living there, Dad was given command of another of the 1st Cavalry's 105mm towed howitzer battalions (the 77th) and returned to Korea for another tour of duty. In the late summer of 1953 a cease fire was agreed in the Korean War and our whole family was able to board another transport for the long trip back to California.
Dad next went to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa to study for a degree in electrical engineering. We were there from 1953 to 1955 and were witness to some of the local attitudes and events associated with school desegregation in the South. From 1955 to 1959, Dad was assigned to artillery schools, first at Fort Bliss, Texas and then at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. My teenage years featured extensive desert and mountain hiking and camping, becoming an Eagle Scout, hunting with my dad's (now my) old .22 cal. rifle as well as a new 12 gauge shotgun, and riding my Pinto 'Tony Boy" all over the extensive ranges of Fort Sill as long as I managed to stay out of the areas where firing was going on (I slipped on that once or twice!). Our little family got a bit larger when Grandmother Jessie came to live with us at Fort Sill in 1957 and my sister (Leslie Anne Neely) was born at the post hospital on July 15, 1957.1 graduated from high school in 1959 just before our family moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas so that Dad could attend the Army Command and General Staff College. I left home late that summer to fly to Hanover, New Hampshire to begin attending Dartmouth College. Later that year my parents, grandmother Jessie, and sister Leslie moved to Oberamergau, Germany where Dad taught the use of short range nuclear weapons at a NATO school. I joined them for summer vacations and was able to see a good deal of Europe as a result.
In 1961 Dad was given another battalion command, this time of an "Honest John" nuclear-armed rocket unit, the 1st Battalion, 33rd Artillery in Ansbach, Germany. This was his third battalion command, an unusual occurrence in the Army where command opportunities are few and far between, and says something important about him. He was very efficient, concerned about his subordinates, always achieved excellent results whether on the battlefield or in training exercises, and was highly respected as a commander. He had little patience for the bureaucratic games sometimes played by higher-level headquarters (and probably made that evident at times) and didn't spend time maneuvering for the next promotion. His last Army assignment was at Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois in 1962-63 assisting in the development of new artillery weapons.
Lt. Colonel William Warren Neely, U.S. Army
Recent family history (in brief) - 1963 to the present I graduated from Dartmouth in 1963 just as Dad was retiring from the Army, getting Mother and Leslie settled in a house in Arlington, Virginia, and beginning a nine year second career with a company in the Washington area that did computer data base work for NASA. Leslie attended nearby St. Agnes school. Her favorite extracurricular activity was riding at a stable in Maryland. I had been commissioned in the Army (military intelligence) when I graduated from college and spent the middle 1960s on assignments in Germany. In 1968 I went off Army active duty with enough money saved for a little adventure ~ buying a small, 24 foot, sailboat in the Chesapeake Bay and sailing it to Florida and the Bahamas. In March 1970 I married a school teacher from Baltimore, Susan Carol Miller, and, after a long honeymoon in the Bahamas on my boat (her friends and family were amazed when she packed her trousseau in one of my old duffle bags), we settled down in Miami on a somewhat larger but older wooden sail boat. I worked at the University of Miami, studied international affairs, and rebuilt the boat while Susan taught in the local schools. By the early 1970s, Mother had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and was beginning to have problems navigating the steps and steep slopes of the family's house in Arlington. In 1972 Dad retired for the second time and he, Mother and Leslie moved to a one-level house with a pool (useful in Mom's therapy) in Sarasota, Florida. Dad took up running with his usual well-organized and competitive approach and was soon regularly winning local and regional races in his age category. Leslie also adapted well to life in Florida, later graduating from the University of Florida and becoming an ardent UF fan. Susan and I didn't stay in Florida long but returned to northern Virginia in 1973 where I began a 28 year career with the Central Intelligence Agency and continued an overlapping 30+ year (active and reserve) career with the Army, retiring as a Colonel. In 1981 our son, Craig William Neely was born; he continues to be a major joy for us and is currently a senior in college studying electrical engineering, whenever he isn't rowing crew, skiing, hiking, or mountain biking. I recently retired and am having a busy time with house and car projects, sailing, and genealogy. Leslie was a police officer for about five years before becoming an insurance adjuster (seeing the car accidents from a different perspective) and is active supporting her old UF sorority. In 1996 she married a native Floridian, fellow University of Florida graduate, and geologist, Michael R. Bollinger. Anne (Mother) died in 1995 after a brave and uncomplaining thirty year battle with multiple sclerosis (ably and lovingly supported by Dad). Dad remarried in 1996 to Dorothy Marion Attig Gibson. All of his earlier running gave Dad hip problems so he has switched to swimming and in 1997 he had emergency ulcer surgery but, after recovering, he and Dorothy are in good health and enjoying life in Florida.
The two grandchildren of Ernest Monroe Neely
- William Warren Neely, Jr. 1942-
- Leslie Anne Neely Bollinger 1957-
When I became interested in genealogy in the early 1980's, I enjoyed learning about the Will Neely family by corresponding with several of his descendants that my dad had known when he was young. These included Unice Roscoe Neely, Leota Neely Knox, and Lorena Neely Brown. More recently I have been happy to have had the chance to work with Roy G. "Buddy" Neely, Jr., his sister Kate Neely Hillhouse and many other Theophilus Neely descendants while preparing this book. It has been great fun and I hope to keep up the contacts in the future.
Prepared by William W. Neely, Jr., June 2002.