Judie Neale: A Life in News and Music
Photo courtesy of Judie Neale
Judie Neale lives in Swarthmore now, but she grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and graduated from West Chester High School in 1958. She has always loved music. At the age of six, she started piano lessons with her church choir director, who soon told Judie’s family that the girl needed a more experienced teacher. Judie went on to study the piano for 12 years.
Her favorite instrument, however, was voice, which she studied for six years. The family lived near West Chester University, which was known for its fine music department. As a young child, Judie sang in the primary choir at Westminster Presbyterian Church. By age 13, she had joined its adult choir. That choir, like many local church choirs, benefited from having many talented music students as members, and Judie learned from singing with them.
In high school, she was selected to sing in Pennsylvania’s Southeastern District Chorus. At 16, she sang in the chorus in a performance of one of her favorite musicals, Call Me Madam, presented by the Kennett Symphony and Opera at Longwood Gardens.
Although her father was glad to support his daughter’s musical passion, he felt it was important that her formal education should lead to a well-paying career. So, when she attended Katharine Gibbs Junior College — a women’s liberal arts school connected with Columbia University — she studied liberal arts and management rather than music.
After graduating from college, Judie went to work for ABC Television and Radio Network News, where the news anchor John Cameron Swayze became one of her mentors. She began as an administrative assistant in the news and special events department, where her first assignment was covering Princess Margaret’s wedding in London. Other plum assignments included the Kennedy-Nixon campaign and, later, John Kennedy’s inauguration — notable, among other reasons, for Jackie Kennedy’s having attended coatless despite the below-freezing temperature. Later, Judie also covered some of NASA’s space launches.
Her nearly five years at ABC were happy and productive, Judie says. At night, after her regular workday, she often joined the ABC tech crew backstage at The Bert Parks Show, learning how they did their jobs. “Sometimes work would run late, and I wouldn’t have time to rush home for dinner,” she recalls. “Thank goodness for vending machines! I ate a lot of Fritos.”
New York City was a good place for a woman interested in music. With ABC’s studio engineer, Judie attended Metropolitan Opera auditions, as well as live performances of the classical music show, The Voice of Firestone, both of which the network broadcast. And she continued her classical voice training with a teacher who had sung at the Met. Using ABC’s studio, and accompanied by ABC’s studio band, she produced two records. She also joined a group that performed Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.
Judie had dreamed of becoming a newscast producer or director, but her career trajectory changed soon after she met Larry Neale at the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, where he sang in the choir. After spotting her sitting in the balcony, he became determined that they should become better acquainted.
Judie and Larry sang together in several of the church’s benefit concerts, although she wasn’t able to join the choir because of her busy schedule at ABC. “He wasn’t happy, because our dates were when I could get a break for lunch — usually only a half hour,” she recalls. “I practically lived at ABC.”
When Larry was offered a job as art director at a Philadelphia department store, he wanted her to come with him. But engagement and marriage were not on Judie’s mind, she says. At Katharine Gibbs, she recalls, “We went to college to find a career, not a husband.”
“You go to Philadelphia, and I’ll stay in New York, and we’ll stay friends,” she told Larry.
Then, after they performed in the second benefit show for the church, Larry presented her with a bouquet of roses. When she threw the wrapping paper in the trash, he nosedived in after it, emerging to present her with a diamond pendant hidden in the wrappings. “You missed something,” he said. “I’m proposing!”
Judie agreed to wear the pendant underneath her clothes — she even showed it to a few colleagues — but she didn’t give him an immediate answer. She recalls that he didn’t like people looking at her chest when admiring the diamond, so he had the pendant made into an engagement ring.
She had vowed not to marry until she turned 30 and got more accomplishments under her belt, but, after a bit of pressure from her parents, Judie married Larry when she was 24 instead. He was from Arizona, and his mother was somewhat surprised when he announced he was marrying someone from the East Coast.
Although she loved New York City (she says she still does) as well as her job, Larry convinced her that they would be happier living near her parents. Back in Pennsylvania, she found a public relations position at Philadelphia’s Bellevue Hotel. Later, she became one of 12 original paralegals at the law firm of Dechert, Price & Rhoads, where her specialty was trusts and estates.
Music remained a beloved avocation. Until adult-onset asthma brought her singing to a halt in the mid-1980s, Judie occasionally sang in Philadelphia choruses. The last of four intubations damaged her vocal cords, and she reports that her singing voice is now unpredictable.
She says it “drives her nuts” that she can’t participate in a chorus. She misses singing so much.
