Neal McCoy was fond of saying, with a twinkle in his eye, "I was born in Oklahoma Territory!" That was on March 6, 1905, two years before Oklahoma became our 46th state. When Neal was a year and half old, his father died, and Neal's mother, Susan McCoy, determined that her two children should receive as much education as she could arrange, moved the family from the farm in Oklahoma to the tiny town of Chesapeake MO, within walking distance of a one-room schoolhouse.
Neal had an unquenchable thirst for learning, and throughout grade school it irked him that his sister, Dorothy, one year older, and one year ahead of him in school, was learning things that he wasn't. He caught up with her when he skipped 7th grade. The school alternated teaching 7th and 8th grades because it couldn't afford to teach both every year, and in the year Neal was supposed to go to 7th, only 8th was taught. Once he caught up, a friendly competition, and mutual inspiration began, which lasted a lifetime.
When her children completed grade school, Mrs. McCoy moved 8 miles down the road to Marionville MO, within walking distance of a high school. And four years later moved to Waco, Texas to set up a home so that Neal and Dorothy could have a place to live while they both got degrees in mathematics from Baylor University. So complete was the support provided by his mother that Neal used to say, "We were poor, but we didn't know it."
Neal and Dorothy received PhDs in mathematics from Iowa State University in 1929, and while he was there Neal met and married Ardis Hollingsworth, who had graduated from the University, and was working in the Registrar's office. A few weeks before they were married, Neal taught himself how to drive an automobile from a book he borrowed from the library. Without a license (it wasn't required in Iowa) Neal and Ardis left Iowa City the afternoon after they were married on September 3, 1929, and drove through Chicago, Detroit, southern Ontario, Niagara Falls, and New York, finally arriving in Princeton, NJ, where Neal was to begin a two-year appointment as a National Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. Neal had $200 in his pocket, and Ardis had $300. Neal liked to say that he married Ardis for her money. When Neal applied for the driver's license required by the state of New Jersey, the inspector noticed the Iowa plate, and asked Neal how he got the car to New Jersey. Neal told him, and the inspector skipped the test and handed him the license. "If you drove that thing from Iowa, you know how to drive," he said.
Neal came to Smith in 1931, at the depth of the depression, the first male member of the Smith mathematics deptartment. During his 39 years on the Smith Faculty Neal published many papers in his specialty, ring theory, as well as six books. Models of clarity, his books were adopted around the world as undergraduate texts. His widely heralded Introduction to Modern Algebra, can be read in Turkish and Braille. Neal served as editor of the Duke Mathematical Journal and the Carus Mathematical Monographs. He was an administrative officer of the American Mathematical Society, the Mathematical Association of America, and the Association of Teachers of Mathematics in New England. He was appointed Gates Professor at Smith in 1961.
As productive and respected as Neal was as a mathematician, he cherished his role as teacher. He helped shape a mathematics department known throughout academic circles as a place where both scholarship and excellence in teaching were valued, and he attracted to Smith eminent scholar-teachers whose influence on the department remains to this day.
In addition to his research and teaching, Neal was an energetic and respected contributor to faculty governance at Smith. Each time one of you on the science faculty finds yourself gazing out your office window, you might murmur a word of thanks to Neal McCoy. For in 1963 when the architects presented the plans for the new science center to be added on to Burton hall, the addition showed a lovely mansard roof, which brilliantly added a contemporary new-science look to the structure, while blending the new building into the surrounding architecture. "Where are the windows on the second and third floors?" asked Neal when he saw the plans. The designers explained to him that with this type of roof there are no windows, just tiny lookouts. In the same kind, gentlemanly and supportive way Neal talked to his students, he handed the plans back to the architects and said: "This is a fine first effort. Now go back and put in full-sized windows on the second and third floors." Not to leave things to chance, of course, Neal then led a large contingent of faculty to the Board of Trustees to make sure the windows got in there.
When he retired the mathematical world honored Neal with an international conference on ring theory, held at Smith on May 1 and 2, 1970. Many of those who came to honor him were active mathematicians who had been his students.
Neal and Ardis knew both triumph and tragedy. Soon after coming to Smith they had a son Paul, who became an accomplished scholar, won honors at Oberlin College, and attended John's Hopkins University. He was killed in a tragic accident in Baltimore in 1957 at the age of 22. Only those who have lost children before their time can know the pain that the McCoys must have endured after such an event.
Neal and Ardis moved to Rockridge Retirement Home in April, 1986, when arthritis and osteoporosis prevented Ardis from climbing the stairs in their two-story home on Ridgewood Terrace. They still managed to take their beloved walks in the woods around Rockridge, naming flowers and identifying birds. Even in his later years, Neal never forgot the name of a flower, or a bird, or a former student. Ardis passed away in 1988.
Although separated by miles, Neal and his sister Dorothy never drifted far apart in spirit. She flew from Texas to see him every year, without fail, after Neal retired. The last time she was here was in spring, 2000, when Neal was 95 and Dorothy was 96.
Neal McCoy died on January 4, 2001. But even after all who knew the tall, kindly scholar-teacher are gone, the wonderful effect he had on mathematics and mathematicians will echo for generations.