About 15 years ago I had the rare treat to visit with a woman who was 105 years old. Emma Wilson was my cousin’s husband’s grandmother, and she lived on a farm in Red Boiling Springs, Tenn. At that point she was not only still living at home, but she was still buying and selling cattle. Clearly not your typical centenarian.
As coincidence would have it, she had been a school teacher in my hometown of Conyers, Ga., back in 1912. I asked her about that experience, and she recalled how she got the job and what social life was like in our small town. Then, incredibly, she began naming individual students she had taught. And telling stories about some of them.
I sat there in awe as this woman rattled off children’s names from 80 years before. I sometimes have trouble remembering people I met last week. But some folks are just blessed with the gift of memory.
Faculty and alumni already know exactly why I’m telling you this.
There are many people more qualified than I am to pay tribute to Neale Pryor. Dr. Pryor — who passed away on Sunday after a long illness — taught Bible at Harding for more than 40 years and at one point served the university as Vice President for Academic Affairs. As one of our most beloved teachers, Dr. Pryor was legendary for quite a few reasons. But man, did he have an incredible memory.
He called his students by name in class. And outside of class. And he called them by name 10, 20, 30 or more years later when they returned to campus. Sometimes, when reunited with a former student, he would even say, “Now you sat on the front row in Acts in 1979, didn’t you?” If he met a student’s parents, those names became part of the memory bank, too.
This wasn’t just a party trick. It was the concentrated effort of a man who loved people, who loved his students, and who wanted to know them personally. In his Sunday morning auditorium class, he often began by asking guests to stand and introduce themselves. You can bet he would remember them later.
It was a gift he used to great advantage in more than 50 years as a gospel preacher. I vividly remember one Sunday evening at the College Church, when he began his sermon with the Creation story. And during the next 30 minutes, he took us on a sweeping tour of the entire Old Testament. He went all the way to Malachi, tying all the major events together into a seamless narrative of God’s love for humanity. It was the kind of sermon that makes writers want to use the word “magisterial.” And he did it all without notes.
I talked with a friend who took his Bible class in 1962, the first semester Dr. Pryor taught at Harding. Deanna Brooks was initially disappointed that she couldn’t take Jimmy Allen’s class, and she wasn’t sure about being a “guinea pig” for the new guy on the faculty. Did her doubts last? “After one week,” she said simply, “I was hooked.”
I also spoke with a student who had him during one of his final years on the faculty. Jessie Fulks shared these words: “I was daily amazed at how gracefully he handled the topics that arose during Christian Ethics, as well as [how he handled] those of us who had very strong feelings about some of those topics. Both his teachings and his life were examples of how to live blamelessly for the sake of Christ, which motivates so many of us who’ve learned at his feet to do the same. I can only think of Paul’s command to ‘follow me as I follow Christ’ as an appropriate summation of the life of Dr. Pryor.”
These are just two bookend snapshots of the countless lives touched during more than 40 years of ministry. Today’s Harding students sadly never had the chance to be “hooked” into a deeper love of God by this gentle, witty man from Kentucky. He knew God’s word intimately, lived it with integrity, and shared it with untold thousands in classrooms, gospel meetings and living rooms.
The last time many of us heard Neale speak, he led the closing prayer on Easter Sunday. Despite his illness, he spoke to God as eloquently as ever. Having just returned from the funeral of my own father — whose battle with memory loss amazingly never robbed him of the words to pray — I marveled that even in the midst of this cruel disease, God grants us these tender mercies.
To his beloved wife Treva and his family, thank you for sharing him with us. I’ve only been here since 2003, but I’m proud to be among the vast number of friends whom Dr. Pryor greeted from memory. Praise God that he is now with his Heavenly Father, who has welcomed him home, and who, too, knows Neale by name.
