McNeill gets art advocacy award

By Tori Hamby

Staff Writer

A local Hoke County arts educator has been awarded a statewide honor for her help in bringing the arts alive in a community once deprived of arts education.
The North Carolina Music Educators Association gave the 2010 Music Education Advocate Award—a lifetime arts leadership and advocacy honor—to Mary Archie Brown McNeill.
Diane Guthrie, a music specialist at Clemmons Elementary Schools in Clemmons and former high school choral student of McNeill, said McNeill was one of the most influential people in her life.
“Because she genuinely cared, nurtured and coached my talent and gave me opportunities to perform, I developed into the singer I had always hoped to be,” said Guthrie, who nominated McNeill for the award.
“She continued to mentor me through college and my doctoral studies. I never gave a performance within a day’s drive that she did not attend with her husband by her side. And, of all my teachers, receiving praise from Mrs. McNeill was the most coveted of all.”

Guthrie, a graduate of Hoke High School where McNeill taught a variety of music classes until 1980, also credited McNeill for bringing the arts to a county that had little to offer in terms of arts education.

“The high school had a marching band play at football games, but none of us had heard a symphony orchestra in our town,” Guthrie said. “I barely remember having a music teacher visit our classroom in elementary school. It was not until I got to high school that I had the opportunity to sing in a chorus every day.”
According to Guthrie, out of McNeill’s honors ensemble of twenty upperclassman, eight later became music majors and educators.
“Yes, it was all about the music, all about the performance, but it was also all about life,” Guthrie said. “We were all convinced we would never want a life without music.”
While working in Hoke County Schools in the 1960s, McNeill also formed the Hoke County Boys’ Choir in an effort to get more local young men involved in music and build up the high school choir program. In a letter supporting McNeill’s nomination, former Boys’ Choir member Ron Huff recounted the many enriching experiences McNeill exposed her students to.
“She not only produced excellent choral groups, but took us out of our small town to compete and excel in choral competitions, bringing us a wealth of new experience,” Huff wrote. “As she continued to build her programs, she later regularly took groups out of state and even to Europe. These were ground-breaking accomplishments at the time that will probably never be equaled.”
After retiring as a choral teacher in 1980, she was hired as the school system’s Cultural Arts Coordinator by former Hoke Superintendent Raz Autry. She spent 10 years writing numerous grants that would help finance arts education in schools around the county. Some grants even provided funding for summer enrichment programs that included full-scale musical performances. During McNeill’s tenure, drama classes were also added to the high school curriculum.
“She wrote grant after grant to provide every possible offering of the arts to the community,” Guthrie said.
During this time, McNeill also served on a committee whose goal was to develop a local arts and crafts festival—the Hoke Heritage Hobnob Festival—later to be known as the North Carolina Turkey Festival. McNeill, who served as the festival’s entertainment director, used the opportunity to showcase various arts performances by local and contracted groups.
“She has made sure the arts and some form of entertainment were included to celebrate every milestone and success,” Guthrie said.
After retiring from Hoke County Schools in May of 1991, McNeill became the director Sandhills Community College’s Raeford satellite campus, where the program grew to include about 200 students. Following her retirement from Sandhills in 1993, she dedicated even more time to Leadership Hoke, a strategic planning committee dedicated to improving the quality of life, business growth and county resources.
In April of 2000, 150 of McNeill’s former students participated in a choral reunion, Choral Fest 2000, to honor their teacher, mentor, director and friend. They also created the Mary Archie McNeill Endowment Fund—which raised over $70,000 for arts education within the county. The event was repeated in 2005.
“As an organizer for this event and member of the foundation board, I have been able to witness the impact that she continues to have on her former students, current students and the community at large,” Huff wrote.
McNeill was born on April 28, 1934 in Robeson County. In 1956, she graduated cum laude from Flora MacDonald College in Red Springs with a bachelor’s degree in music and a concentration in voice, music education and choral art. She accepted her first job with Hoke County Schools in 1956 to teach classroom music at the elementary and junior high levels.
She married Raeford native Neill Adams McNeill. The couple had a son Neill Adams McNeill Jr., who is currently the co-anchor of Fox News 8 in High Point.
“By working side by side with community leaders, she has helped to make life in Hoke County a better place,” Guthrie said. “Her contributions to the community and mutual respect for others have no doubt helped her grow an entire community of arts supporters and participants.”