Palestine High School Alumni Association

Susan Elizabeth Neel 1962 Born 01-05-1944 Died 06-28-1976 Age 32

01 / 05 / 1944  –  06 / 28 / 1976

Miss Susan Elizabeth Neel of Palestine died Sunday morning in Anderson County Memorial Hospital at the age of 32.

Funeral services will be at 10 a.m. Wednesday in the Bailey Memorial Chapel with the Rev. Bill Leediker officiating. Burial will follow in the New Addition Cemetery.

Pallbearers will be Bill Haney, Vernon Fritz, Phil Jenkins, Pace McDonald III, Ralph Weeks and G. Wayne McDaniel.

A native and lifelong resident of Palestine, Miss Neel was an active member of the First United Methodist Church, where she was in the Invictus Sunday School Class and served as co-chairman of the Lydia Group, United Methodist Women.

Affiliated with the Palestine Poetry Society and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, she was an outstanding musician and was a member of the National Guild of Piano Teachers.

Miss Neel held a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of Houston and had taught private piano lessons here for several years. She had studied piano under Albert Hirsch and Moreland Kortkamp Roller, artists in residence at the University of Houston, and was chosen for further study at the Julliard School of Music in New York City, but declined because of health reasons.

In 1965, Miss Neel was elected to Outstanding Young Women of America and was selected to appear in the 1966 edition of Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities. That same year she also received the Franklin Award as one of the top 20 students out of 20,000.

While at the University of Houston, she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Theta Kappa, Tau Sigma Phi, Phi Mu, and Phi Kappa Phi, and Arts and Sciences Honorary Society.

While a student at Palestine High School, Miss Neel was an oboe soloist, a member of the All Honor Band, member of the National Honor Society and President of the Junior Historians.

A lifetime member of the Order of Rainbow Girls, she had served as organist for the Bethlehem Lutheran Church. An outstanding piano student of Mrs. J. D. Rondeaux, she was presented in recital in 1962 during her senior year of high school.

She is survived by her parents, Johnnie F. and Mrs. Elizabeth Donhauser Neel of Palestine; her grandfather, J. W. Neel of Elkhart; her aunts, Mrs. Helen Marie Combs of Baytown and Mrs. Minnie Lee Jenkins of Palestine; and four cousins, Gordon and Cathy Combs of Baytown, Ruth Evans of Austin and Johnny Jenkins of Palestine.

Source: Palestine Herald-Press 06-28-1976