Warren Albert McNeill (1903–1998)

Warren Albert McNeill (1903-1998) was born in Brockton, Mass. in 1903, grew up in Lynchburg, Va., and received B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Richmond. He was a reporter for the Lynchburg News and the Richmond Times-Dispatch in the mid-1920s where he served as city editor before becoming a member of the Associated Press staff in 1930. In 1947 he left AP to become Administrative Assistant to Senator A. Willis Robertson of Virginia. He later moved to Kentucky and became Director of Public Relations and Advertising for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in 1960, and retired in 1970. McNeill began corresponding with Richmond writer James Branch Cabell in 1924 when he was writing for the book page in the Lynchburg News. He wrote 'Cabellian Harmonics', a study of the works of Cabell which published in 1928. He also wrote Cabell book reviews for Lynchburg, Richmond, and Nashville newspapers, and a stage adaptation of "In Ursula's Garden" entitled "The Masque." In the 1970s he wrote a number of articles on Cabell published in two journals devoted to Cabell, The Cabellian and Kalki. He was a former president of the Railroad Public Relations Association and was recognized as Kentucky's first fully accredited member of the Public Relations Society of America. He died July 19, 1998 in Lexington, Kentucky. [see the obituary for Warren A. McNeill, July 21, 1998, Richmond Times-Dispatch]