Vernon Neal always wanted to write. Attending Wisconsin Lutheran High School, however, he was never given a chance. For one reason or another, someone always had an excuse for why he couldn’t participate. This greatly diminished his confidence in his writing skills and he almost gave it up entirely.
This changed completely when he came to MATC in 1970. Faculty advisers for The Times, Maudy Burke and Tom Gould, gave him a chance to write. He started as the paper’s basketball statistician and reporter, but almost immediately Burke and Gould saw that Neal had talent and let him move on to other stories.
What Neal remembers most fondly about writing for the paper was the amount of freedom he had to report on stories that he and the rest of the student body would find interesting. He also says that the atmosphere at the paper was always extremely welcoming and fun. “No matter what we were doing,” Neal shared, “it was always because we all loved writing for The Times and had fun doing it.”
His skills as a writer and the experience he gained reporting news helped him discover new possibilities after he left MATC in 1974. He met Virginia Williams, an editor at the Milwaukee magazine Echo, who hired him as a reporter. His first assignment was interviewing Duke Ellington when he came to play a concert in Milwaukee. Neal and Ellington hit it off immediately and his story received national attention.
Since then Neal has had a long and successful career as a writer, working for magazines and newspapers in Milwaukee and in Chicago. His experiences have given him opportunities to interview stars such as Bill Cosby, Jesse Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger  and many others.
Neal, now living in Tucson, Ariz, says that he will be forever grateful to all the people that helped him along the way. “I will always be thankful to the people that opened up doors for me that I never knew even existed. Tom Gould and Maudy Burke showed me that I really could write and to never doubt myself.”
If the people at The Times had never given Neal that extra push, he may have never been a writer and his great talents would have gone undiscovered.