After graduating from high school in 1966, I attended Auburn University. It was the height of the Viet Nam war and classmates were scurrying about trying to find a Guard Unit to join to escape the draft. Following my dad’s footsteps, I applied and was accepted into the Naval ROTC program. After my sophomore year, I committed stay in the program and serve three years as an Officer in the Navy. After my junior year, those in the program were required to take a two-month Midshipman Cruisc. I was assigned to a ship home based in Anaheim, California along with several other Midshipmen from the Naval Academy. It was a great experience for me, not only for the time aboard the ship, but also the difference between the culture in California and my home state of Alabama.

I was rated number 1 on my Midshipman Cruise and was told that I could pick my location for fulfillment of my obligation upon graduation and I was assured that I was almost surecertain to receive it. I picked San Diego first and Japan second and when I got my orders, much to my surprise, I was directed to serve as the Navigator of the USS Plymouth Rock LSD-29 home based in Little Creek, Virginia. I always told my friends that one day I was a frat boy in Auburn and the next, the Navigator of a six-hundred-foot ship carrying 600 sailors and Marines. Shakey at first, it was a great experience and one that I will cherish for the rest of my life.

After an Honorable Discharge from the Navy, I applied and was accepted to Cumberland School of Law on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. I must admit that I was somewhat intimidated by some of my classmates in the way they aggressively sparred with professors in class. I found some badly needed confidence when most of them were gone when the second semester began.

After law school, I joined a small but well-established law firm in Birmingham. My work there was primariy focused on corporate matters including mergers and acquisitions, real estate, tax consulting and estate planning. During this period of my life, there was a lot of room for creative thinking, but not time for creative writing. My time was filled with negotiating agreements which would fulfill the desires of parties with differing interests. After 12 years I found that business development and marketing were my strongest traits and I left my law practice behind to join a construction materials firm as Executive Vice President of Business Development and General Counsel. After growing the company to well over $120 million in annual profits, I negotiated the sale of the company to a much larger company and subsequently moved on to a similar position with Tenet Healthcare. I retired from there at the age of 60.

During my career I devoted a lot of time to civic work outside of my work responsibilities. I served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Birmingham Jefferson Transit Authority for five years. I also served as President of the City Council of Mountain Brook, Alabama, a city with a lot of Chiefs and no Indians, for four years. I also served Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Mentone Area Arts Council. I also sat on the Board of several other organizations.

It took me about a month after my retirement to realize that I really had no time to work anyway. During my career, I developed several other interests. My family is an athletic family beginning with my wife who played on the first volleyball team at Auburn University. I was always a good athlete but in a school of over 2,500 students, there was always someone who was better than I and that was fine. I always supported our teams in any way I could. My son Trey was and is an avid runner that was good enough to run in the Boston Marathon. My son Vann, who unfortunately died at age thirty from a brain tumor, was a star in football, basketball and baseball. My daughter Mindy was an All-State player in basketball and went to play in college at Birmingham Southern College. Daughter Carrie was an All-State player in volleyball and could have played in college but she chose not to. After our children had all graduated from high school, my wife and I became USA Olympic Volleyball Referees. We traveled all over the country to call matches on weekends, returning home early Monday morning and with only a few hours of sleep, returning to work.

During my career, I also developed an interest in building museum quality tall ships that I built with plans whose were in Italian. Each one took about a year to complete and are so large that in my latter years I had to build rooms around them so that they can be displayed. While I very much enjoyed building them, building from a set of plans, as challenging as they were, they failed to satisfy my creative desire.

I sought to satisfy my search for a more creative hobby working with clay. I participated in a workshop led by a well-known andrespected potter in Birmingham to learn how to throw pots. During the breaks I found myself taking a piece of clay and making a figure out of it. The instructor saw what I was doing, looked at my work and said that I was in the wrong place. I needed to find a workshop on building clay figures. Following his direction, I participated in several workshops and immediately found the creative urge for which I had been looking. I didn’t like throwing pottery because it left you with clay all over you and I didn’t like getting mud all over me as I built my piece. Making clay figures was much more fun and I felt like my pieces were telling a story, mostly whimsical, every time I finished one. My skills developed rapidly and for the next fifteen years, my wife, who equally enjoyed making enamel on copper earrings and necklaces, traveled the southeast showing our work innumerous art shows and in galleries.

Then Covid hit. All my galleries closed and never re-opened. I found myself in my studio in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, watching six grandchildren staring at their laptops and learning nothing. If there was any time to try my hand at writing a book, this was it.

The name of my book was Memories of a Salty Pirate and his Beautiful Maiden. Memories are little things you put in a box and from time to time you take one out. Sometimes they are happy like when my wife said I was driving erratically and demanded to drive home, hitting a construction sign along the side of the road knocking off the side mirror. It cost $600 to repair but I enjoyed it immensely. On the other hand. some of them were sad as I recall sitting in the living room in the fraternity house during the draft lottery for the Viet Nam War and hearing my brothers moan as their number was called, almost assuring them to be drafted. In any event, the book was fun to write and I put it on Amazon where my friends could find it. Their response was favorable, some commenting that it was like reading a story by Lewis Grizzard, a writer from Atlanta, known for his witty, whimsical and sharply southern take on life. Grizzard died well before his time from heart complications at the age of 47. I took their reference to Lewis Grizzard that as the highest compliment one could make.

Then, the earth began to shake beneath my feet. It was Ms. Mackey rolling over in her grave. I remembered her telling me to find a serious topic and write about it. I had written a book, but it certainly was not serious. Within weeks I began thinking about finding a story that I could tell that would not be whimsical. I wrote down several things that I thought I might like to write about. Auburn was one, sports was one, history was another. I started thinking that everyone in the southeast would know about Heisman Trophy winners from Auburn, but would they know about how the sport of football began at Auburn. It immediately hit me that John Heisman coached at Auburn, but I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t think most people would either. I immediately started my research and read articles and newspaper reports until I found myself reading the same things over and over again. It was time to write.

It took about a year to fully research and write Setting the Stage, the Early Days of Auburn Football. I self-published the book and put it on Amazon. About six months later I received a call from a literary agent who wanted to represent me in marketing my book. He advised that it would require about $25,000 from me to get started. I told him I would get back to him soon. This is a book that I wrote for fun. Was it something I wanted to spend that kind of money on? Probably not, but I thought I should do a little research on it since it was an industry of which I was totally ignorant. I found that less than 1% of the books that were self-published ever reached consideration by a national publishing house. I had a lot of fun writing the book and it had a beautiful blue cover that I thought would look good on my bookshelf. I decided to put it on the shelf and pass on the offer.

Around a year went by and approximately 15 literary agents called with all the same pitch, each asking for a large sum of money to represent me. Then, I received a call one morning from a literary agent Alex Scott, and before he could start to make his pitch, I interrupted him and asked how much was it going to cost. He said if he couldn’t find a publishing house to acquire the rights to my book, I would owe him nothing. That was an angle that I had not heard. With nothing to lose, why not give it a fling. Contracts were signed and I was on a journey that I had no idea where was going.

Within two weeks, I received a call from Kerry Donovan, Executive Editor for Berkley Books, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House Publishing. She advised that my book was under consideration for acquisition by her company and although it had several levels that had to be transgressed in her company before final approval, would I be interested. “Well sure” said.

Several months went by and I received another call from Kerry Donovan advising that the acquisition had been finally approved and she would be sending me a contract for my review. After review, the terms of the contract were acceptable to me, and I signed and returned it to her. It was a great learning experience for me, first of which there is nothing for free in order for your book to cross the finish line. There are obligations along the way that required payment from me. No problem, it was fun.

Setting the Stage. The Early Days of Auburn Football is set to be launched in the early part of 2027, and I could not be happier. There is more to the story, however.

About a month after signing with Berkley Books, I received a telephone call from Joseph Matukewicz, President of Sony Film Acquisitions and Sony’s subsidiary, Stage Six Productions, to inquire about my interest in selling the movie rights to Setting the Stage. He stated that a joint venture had been formed between Stage Six Productions and Universal Studios to adapt the book into a full-length film. If I were interested, he would send a contract for me to consider. During the time of our negotiations, FX Productions, a subsidiary of Disney was added to the joint venture giving them streaming rights for the project if I would approve. I approved the arrangement and contracts were signed.

As a byproduct of the agreement, I was required to provide a script to the new joint venture. I was able to secure the services of Steve Kloves who wrote and directed the film The Fabulous Baker Boys and is best known for writing the screenplay for all but one of the Harry Potter films. He will soon be complete with his work and planning, and production should begin in the fall. The film, along with the book will launch in New York City early next year.

I have some other ideas bouncing around in my head. Check back soon for future developments.

When not in their home in Birmingham, you can often find Neal and his wife, Melinda, at their home in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, or their game day home in Auburn, Alabama.