He’s a Fort Mill sports history trivia question. And, friends say, so much more.
Tom “Zeke” Neal is the answer to a trivia question, but his lifetime spent shaping Fort Mill youth was anything but a trivial pursuit.
“That’s what we’ve been thinking about,” daughter Susan Walker said Tuesday, “how many lives he touched.”
Neal died early Tuesday morning at age 84.
Generations of town youth knew Neal as the coach of football, basketball and track teams, or gym class. Neal spent most of his four decades coaching at Fort Mill High School.
Few likely knew Neal’s passing connection to a piece of Fort Mill history.
Fellow coaches through the years sometimes mentioned to players how Neal christened a then-new football field at the high school that opened on Banks Street in 1952.
“I have read that,” said Chip Heemsoth on Tuesday, one of the foremost experts on Fort Mill history. “I’m confident that he did not score the first touchdown. Whitmire (High School) scored the first touchdown in the game. Tom scored the first Fort Mill touchdown.”
Heemsoth keeps reams of Fort Mill Times archive film, which he used for popular “Do You Remember?” columns in the paper. He checked the film Tuesday. Neal indeed scored the first Fort Mill touchdown at the stadium on Banks Street, on a 50-yard halfback pass on Sept. 11, 1953.
That stadium, cement and aluminum seats dug into an earthen berm, doesn’t exist anymore. It fielded high school and later middle school games. The school transitioned to a middle school when the current Fort Mill High opened in 1986. Middle school and rec league play continued at the Banks Street field until a new Fort Mill Middle School opened in 1998.
Now the field where Neal caught his pass is a golf course driving range. Only the gymnasium, now called Fort Mill Community Center, remains after the former school was demolished in 2014 to make way for new homes.
Coaching family
Like the old school and stadium, Neal is a link to Fort Mill past.
Many former players and students took to social media to offer condolences. Many mentioned a caring coach, both before and after graduation.
Steve Gribble coached football with Neal for more than 20 years. The two shared an office. They often shared a lunch break.
“It’s still very difficult to deal with,” Gribble said Wednesday morning. “I don’t know how coaches are today. I know back then, when we were all together, coaches were like family. It’s like losing a family member. He was a great coach, but an even better person.”
Gribble describes a friend who was interested in more than wins and losses.
“He cared about his players and his students,” Gribble said. “He always tried to instill to them the right way to do things. A great role model to the kids and to his students.”
Steve Mullinax had his own long career coaching at Fort Mill, which included decades coaching football and track with Neal. Mullinax describes Neal as a coach even to him, a mentor along with the late Bill Banks.
“The first day I ever walked into a football coaches meeting he was in there,” Mullinax said of Neal. “When I got there he was Zeke. For a long time, I didn’t know what his name was.”
Mullinax and Neal bonded through sports, particularly track where for a time they were the only two coaches. Neal coached boys, Mullinax the girls. Mullinax began his coaching career at the Banks Street school where Neal played, was part of the first graduating class and later returned as coach.
“He helped a very, very young coach get used to what was expected,” Mullinax said.
Faith in action
Many who knew Neal well knew him not just as a teacher or coach, but as a man of faith. Neal was a lifelong member of First Baptist Church. He was a deacon there into his later years. Neal watched babies on the infant hall. He sang in the choir. He supported missions events in countries he’d never visit, and supported York County women’s programs by acting in a 50s-themed musical fundraiser. Neal played the hard-charging high school coach, whistle in hand.
“He lived his faith,” Gribble said.
In an unusual act of faith, Neal even proposed getting wife Betty Jean an ox for Christmas one year. The pair heard how livestock can help families in other parts of the world. They decided to gift each other something to help others.
“Yes one year they bought each other an ox through World Vision to go to a family oversees,” Walker said.
Greg Pendarvis is a former state champion baseball coach at Fort Mill High, who also coached defensive backs on the football team when he moved to Fort Mill 25 years ago. Neal coached defensive line.
“Coach Neal was one of the most humble football coaches and men of God that I have met in my 30 years of teaching (and) coaching,” Pendarvis said.
Neal always got the best out of his players due to his experience, passion for the game and love for kids, Pendarvis said. Pendarvis and his wife Mia founded Victory Sports Outreach, which runs Christian-based sports leagues and camps in Fort Mill and around South Carolina. When camps started 16 years ago, Neal lead the football.
“His birthday was usually during camp, so we would always sing ‘Happy Birthday’ and always ask how old he was,” Pendarvis said. “When I would see him at church, he would always say he was ready for another camp.”
Neal was almost 80 years old before he told Pendarvis he might have to miss a camp. He would still visit up until a couple of years ago.
“Just an awesome awesome coach, leader, man and friend,” Pendarvis said.
Always a coach
Neal came back to Fort Mill in 1970. He wouldn’t leave the high school until 2001. He coached track two decades, basketball for a dozen years. He coached football the whole time. He refereed basketball games for a time. In his later years, Neal couldn’t go many places without a “hey, coach” from someone.
There was the restaurant in Tennessee on a cross country trip, where his server was a former student. There was the time Walker first introduced her dad to eventual husband Bill at a Charlotte Knights game.
“As soon as he saw my dad he knew, ‘that was my ninth-grade geography teacher,’” Walker said.
If Neal was easy to recognize as coach, it’s because he seldom stopped doing it. Even if he wasn’t being paid for the work. Like on trips, Walker recalls, to watch the Atlanta Braves play.
“He was so funny,” she said, “he’d fuss and fuss if they didn’t bunt when he thought they should bunt, and if they were playing badly he’d always grumble ‘I hope they lose, they don’t deserve to win’ and Betty Jean would always respond in her Southern voice, ‘Aww honey, you don’t mean that.’ Every time.”
Dedicated to Fort Mill
Neal’s first wife, Elaine, died in 1998. Afterward he reconnected with Betty Jean, his high school sweetheart. The pair married in 2000. Beside the wedding photo in their home, Walker said, sit photos of them at prom together.
Just another reminder how much Fort Mill High meant to Neal, and he to it.
“People that don’t teach and coach full-time don’t realize how hard that is,” Mullinax said. “Particularly when you get some age on you. And Zeke did that right up until retirement.”
Friends say Neal was forever dedicated to the town he called home.
“Hard-working man,” Mullinax said. “He was dedicated to Fort Mill. Just a special friend to me.”
It’s a town, friends say, made better by his having been here.
“This town is really going to miss him,” Gribble said.
This story was originally published June 3, 2021 at 1:44 PM.
