Obituary of Neal Mills Forney, Jr.

Neal Mills Forney Jr., 92, passed away peacefully Dec. 3, 2019, at Brookdale Carriage Club in Charlotte.

Neal was born in Charlotte in 1927 to Neal Forney Sr. and Roberta Morris Forney. At age 16, he joined the Merchant Marine to take part in WWII, then transferred to the regular Navy when he was old enough. He served in the Philippines and fought in the Battle of Okinawa, piloting an LST landing craft. At the end of the war he inspected blast damage at Hiroshima, thanks to his experience with black pipe in his father’s place of business in Charlotte.

Upon his return to Charlotte he worked with Dr. E.H. Garinger, who had helped him graduate high school while overseas, as well as with Dr. Bonnie Cone as she working to form UNC-Charlotte as a full-fledged college rather than a center of UNC-Chapel Hill.

He joined the Charlotte Police Department and created the Youth Bureau, for which the Charlotte Jaycees named him Man of the Year at age 23. He became a CPD detective and later attended the FBI National Academy. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover introduced him to Lewis Strauss, director of the Atomic Energy Commission, partly because of his wartime experience in Hiroshima, beginning a decades-long association with the AEC.

In his professional career Neal went from the Institute of Government in Chapel Hill to the University of
South Carolina where he worked for the University and also remained with the Atomic Energy Commission. In South Carolina Neal involved himself with state politics and became friends with John C. West, who took office as S.C. Governor in 1971. Neal became an administrator with the Supreme Court of S.C.

In the late 1970s Neal retired from South Carolina and was appointed Operations Manager at the N.C. Justice Academy in Salemburg, where he served until his final and complete retirement, spent in Sampson County with his beloved Chow dogs.

Neal returned to Charlotte in 2012 and moved into Brookdale Carriage Club to be near his daughter and son. Survivors include Donna Lampke, of Charlotte, and her sons Wolfgang and Jacob, and Neal Forney III, of Charlotte, his wife Katherine and their sons Neal IV (Nick), Nick’s wife Chelsea and their daughter Mary Elizabeth Forney; and John and John’s wife Caitlin. Neal Jr.’s sister Jeanne Berry also survives and lives in West Palm Beach, Fla.

A graveside service with military honors will be at Sharon Memorial Park Friday, Dec. 6, at noon with family friend The Rev. John Cleghorn officiating.

Arrangements by Hankins and Whittington.

Many thanks to the caring staff at Brookdale Carriage Club and the wonderful caregivers in Hospice and Palliative Care, Charlotte region.

Feel free to leave the family your condolences via the guestbook provided.