Politics and Printer’s Ink
From Time to Thyme
By Paula Dunn
Former State Senator Luke Kenley recently tipped me off to an alumni profile of Anne Neal Petri in the current issue of Harvard Magazine.
When Senator Kenley mentioned that Petri was Jim Neal’s daughter, I drew a blank for a moment. Then, it hit me that he was talking about DEDE Neal. I didn’t make the connection at first because the entire time she was growing up here in Hamilton County, she was known by her family nickname,“Dede.”
Although Dede and I never attended the same school, we’re contemporaries and we did cross paths briefly back in our grade school days. She wouldn’t remember me, but our encounter stuck in my head because she’s a member of the Neal family.
The Neals were well known in Hamilton County then — they owned the Noblesville Daily Ledger for 71 years!
The first Neals to settle here, Reverend Jabez Neal and his wife, Mary, arrived in the 1850s. It was their sons, Charles S. and E.E. (Edward Everett,) who became the first generation of Neals at the Ledger.
In 1914, Charles and E.E. bought the Ledger and merged it with the Enterprise, a newspaper they’d purchased three years earlier. The Ledger had existed since 1871 under various versions of that name, but once the Neals took control, it remained the “Noblesville Daily Ledger” throughout their ownership.
Charles published the paper and E. E. was the editor until his retirement in 1948.
Upon E. E.’s death in 1951, ownership of the newspaper passed to Charles and Charles’ son, Ralph B. Neal. A dedicated newspaperman for 67 years, Charles worked tirelessly at the Ledger right up to the time he died at the age of 87 in 1959.
After Charles’ death, Ralph became the owner and publisher. The World War I veteran had been working with his father at the paper since 1924.
When Ralph retired in 1965, the Ledger passed to the third generation, Ralph’s sons, James T. “Jim” and John R. John served as publisher and Jim was the editor.
Like the rest of their family, Jim and John were active in the local community, but they both also became involved in state and local politics. John was a member of the Noblesville Common Council for 12 years and served as Noblesville’s mayor twice. Jim held several positions in the state Republican party and was the state party chairman from 1972 to 1973.
You may remember me writing about the bad blood between Jim and Judge Edward New last year. A comment Jim made in his Ledger column, “The County Line,” in 1965 so infuriated Judge New that the judge had him arrested for criminal contempt. The First Amendment case went all the way to the Indiana Supreme Court and made national headlines before being dismissed three years later.
Jim Neal’s younger daughter, Andrea, has had a distinguished career in the newspaper business herself. Like her father, she’s a member of the Indiana Journalism Hall of Fame. After 22 years, however, she left journalism for the field of education.
Although older sister Dede did some writing for the Ledger in her younger days, she’s used her law degree from Harvard in political and cultural sectors.
Her impressive resumé includes such positions as general counsel at the Office of Administration under President Ronald Reagan and president of the conservative non-profit organization, American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA,) which she founded along with Dick Cheney’s widow, Lynne Cheney; Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow; U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman and others.
Currently, Dede serves as Regent of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association (MVLA,) the organization that preserves and maintains George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate.
There is still a member of the family in the journalism business, though. Dede’s daughter, Alexandra Petri, is a staff writer at the Atlantic magazine.
Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com