Neel, Samuel E. (Samuel Ellison), 1914-2004

Virginia attorney.

Lawyer of Washington, D.C., and Fairfax County, Va.

Samuel Neel was born at Kansas City, Mo., on February 22, 1914, the son of a prominent local lawyer and reform Democrat who later helped to bring down the Pendergast political machine. After graduating from the Yale Law School in 1938, he obtained a position with his college mentor, Thurman W. Arnold, who had recently been appointed to head the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. After two years in this position, he was invited by William L. Batt, Sr., the father of a house-mate, to join the newly-formed Materials Division of the Advisory Commission to the Council of National Defense as assistant counsel. Batt had been president of SKF Industries and was one of the "dollar-a-year men" brought into the government to help coordinate rearmament. The Advisory Commission evolved into the Office of Production Management in January 1941 and became the War Production Board a year later after the U.S. entered the war. Neel resigned on February 24, 1942 to assume a commission in the Navy, where he commanded air forces with the Pacific Fleet. After the war he entered private practice in Washington, retiring in 1993.