Christopher Graham writes:
THE death of Keith Neal, a Christian who put his faith into action and made a real difference both at home and abroad, leaves a big hole to be filled, in the community at Hale, in South Manchester, and at St Peter’s, where he had served as church warden, as well as within his family. Keith had for more than 40 years been a prime mover on the St Peter’s Mission In Action Team, leading the parish’s charitable outreach. More recently, his passion for creation and the natural world had made him the poster boy of local residents’ anti-litter campaign in the back lanes around Wythenshawe and Manchester Airport.
Keith was born on 1 November 1938, in Cirencester, where his biologist father, Ernest Neal, was a schoolteacher. Ernest Neal was a world authority on badgers, and the young Keith was at his happiest conducting his own field research on frogs and toads and the ecology of a deciduous wood. The oldest of three brothers, Keith attended Taunton School, in Somerset, and then read natural sciences at Cambridge, where he met Ruth, who was to become his wife.
Following in his father’s footsteps, Keith became a biology teacher, first, at Harrow County School, and then at Manchester Grammar School, where he served as head of biology until his retirement in 1999.
The Taunton School motto Ora et Labora (Worship and Work) well describes Keith’s approach. Brought up in a Baptist household, Keith maintained a disciplined approach to daily prayer and Bible-reading. His daily Quiet Time, a habit established when he met Moral Re Armament (now Initiatives of Change) at university, was the inspiration for everything that he did — in the church family, with his own family, at work, and in retirement.
At Manchester Grammar School, Keith is remembered for his inspiring practical approach to science teaching and the international perspective he promoted. His former students tell of exciting field trips and stimulating foreign excursions, including those to India, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and China. Keith had visited Africa no fewer than 26 times.
Keith’s passion for justice, the environment, and educational opportunities met in his enthusiastic promotion of the SolarAid charity. This worked to substitute solar lamps for unhealthy kerosene lanterns in Third World villages where there was no power, and students had difficulties undertaking their homework. Keith was also a most persuasive and effective salesman of solar lamps for comfortably placed households in Hale. And many are the Hale bathrooms that are Toilet Twinned with infinitely more basic accommodation far away.
Retirement from work did not mean retirement from working. Keith was fully committed to the Lord’s work until the last. His commitment to clearing the streets of rubbish sprang from an appreciation of the damage that rubbish-dumping and littering was doing to wildlife and the environment. His was no cosy Keep Britain Tidy hobby. Keith was out to help to save the planet, to save God’s creation.
Since 2014, Keith had organised the schedule of Sunday-afternoon litter-picks, clearing the rubbish from streets in Hale. The April Hale Tidy-Up was held in his memory.
During the first lockdown in March 2020, Keith started a daily clean-up drive covering a three-mile circuit of rural lanes near his home in Hale Barns. With a litter-picker in one hand and a bag in the other, Keith reckoned that it took on average of two-and-a-half hours to walk the three miles. Keith’s aim was to have completed 1000 such circuits, totalling 3000 miles, before his 85th birthday on 1 November this year. He invited sponsorship to raise money, in equal parts, for Friends of the Earth, SolarAid, and St Peter’s. Writing a few months ago, Keith calculated that he had 200 litter picks and 600 miles still to go.
Keith died peacefully in his sleep on 8 April, Holy Saturday, having been in church on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, and having completed his daily litter-picking challenge on the walk home. He is survived by his wife, their three children, and four grandsons.
