It was happenstance late last year that I reconnected with Martha McNeal, a lifelong family friend - no icebreaker needed - at a pretty party. It was the night before my better half and I departed for Europe where at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam I was handed a paper with the famous artist's quote inscribed. I resolved that as soon as I returned home I was going to accept, with dispatch, Martha McNeal's delightful invitation. Of course, I had in mind more than refreshments. I wanted a story. A tide of memories.
And so, on a cold, wintry day, I had the privilege of visiting the McNeal home on Main Street, where gracious Martha gave me a warm welcome. Right away, the exquisite antiques and art in her beautiful home caught my eye, but the life story, she unspooled, touched my heart.
A native of Fayetteville, Tennessee, Martha was born in January of 1943 to Mercer and Martha Treanor. In this small town in Southern Middle Tennessee, she grew up with her older brother Roy Buck Treanor. Their quiet youth was not all that different from mine, decades later here in Franklinton. Our hometowns were similar in nature and size. But life changed in the 1950s when the McNeal family relocated to Fayetteville from Mobile.
Martha's friend inquired, "Have you seen the McNeal boys?" Affirmative. Martha met Mike McNeal when she was a freshman in high school and he was a sophomore. Cutting right to the chase, it was love at first sight. So, it was not long before Mike asked Martha for a date to the drive-in movie. While her mother initially refused permission - Martha wasn't allowed to date in 1958 - Mrs. Treanor finally agreed to drive her only daughter to the drive-in to meet Mike. And then there were three. An official date - Mike and Martha, and her mother in her own automobile. With a gleam in her eye some sixty-five years later, Martha confided, "I knew he was the one." The sun, the moon, and the stars.
Besotted with one another, Mike and Martha were high school sweethearts at Lincoln County High School. They married in 1962, after both graduated. Mike, the son of James J. McNeal, Sr., and Johnie Pennington McNeal, attended Sewanee, The University of The South, before joining the United States Navy. The newlyweds were living in Texas where in February of 1964 they had their first child Mike. Detonating my memory, their young son Mike, who was my age, and I were childhood friends.
With the Senior McNeals residing in Franklinton where they owned and operated Southern Truck Lines, hauling for Borden's, Mike and Martha were lured here for Mike to work with his dad and take over the family business. When in 1966 their daughter Lisa was born, Mr. James called my father, who was not only the longtime administrator/CEO, at the Bogalusa Community Medical Center but also his friend. Ms. Martha recalled it like it was yesterday. Her father-in-law called my dad to apprise him that she and Mike were on their way to the hospital to have the baby. \
Good fortune continued to shine on the McNeal family; the trucking business burgeoned. And in the early 1970s they purchased the Nina Burris house on Main Street, raising their family in the magnificent historic home where Martha has now lived for fifty years. It holds a treasure trove of memories for the McNeals and also for several school teachers who, over time, lived in the lovely guest house in back. And Ms. Martha filled the main home - it is a showplace - with needlepoint, which handwork she did herself, and a significant collection of antiques and art. As I admired a beautiful marble top sofa table, Ms. Martha spoke my language, "I bought two pieces that day. This one and the one in the dining room. I couldn't figure out how to sneak two in." A friend with my own problems.
Mike bought the business from his dad in 1979, owning and operating it until 1986. In the meantime, he had become a successful stock broker with AG Edwards, before retirement in 1989. But it had not been all work and no play. Mike enjoyed boating, riding horseback, and piloting his plane out of the Franklinton airport. He belonged to the Long Range Skeet Club and the Franklinton Lion's Club, and the McNeals were longtime members of First Baptist Church of Franklinton.
Following in his father's footsteps, son Mike McNeal - Ms. Martha fondly calls him "Little Mike" - is a Financial Consultant with McNeal Investment Group. Mike is married to Vickie Nelson, a Washington Parish native. And daughter Lisa, who is married to Whit Davey, lives in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and Dallas, Texas, where she is a flight attendant, having flown with American Airlines for more than three decades. And husband Whit is a pilot like his late father-in-law.
Lamentably, Mike - Ms. Martha fondly calls him "Big Mike" - passed away in November of 2020 but not before he had penned a poem to the love of his life. Theirs was a love story spanning fifty-eight years of marriage, plus courtship. My
