Robert "Bob" Leonard McNeill

Robert Leonard (“Bob”) McNeill, 95 COLORADO – Robert “Bob” McNeill, 95, died June 27, 2020, in Denver, CO. Robert McNeill was born on October 29, 1924 in Cambridge MA to Walter Leonard McNeill and Alice Mitchell McNeill. He graduated from Arlington High School in 1942 and then served in the U.S. Navy as a welder doing airplane repair during World War II, from March 1943 to February 1946. A wonderful dancer, Bob had found the perfect partner in Josephine Piwcio, a Hartford CT resident, before he was drafted, and had sent her an engagement ring while he was stationed at a naval airbase in Hawaii during the war. Bob moved to Hartford after the war. He worked as a welder for United Aircraft and married Jo on January 25, 1947. Bob and Jo moved back to the Boston area in 1948 where he received funding from the GI Bill to attend Northeastern University. He achieved top academic honors while earning his B.A. in History and Political Science. After having been a near failing student earlier - #549 in his high school graduating class of 550 - he graduated third in his class of 2,000 at Northeastern in 1952. “I was delirious with the joy of learning,” he said. Bob was then accepted by the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, an elite school of foreign affairs administered jointly by Harvard and Tufts. He ranked at the top of his class for the Master’s degree – and went on to complete Fletcher’s PhD program in 1956. Shortly before he received his PhD, Bob and Jo had their first son, and named him Robert Fletcher. After a year teaching social science at the University of Puerto Rico, Bob and Jo moved to Washington D.C. where he had been offered a job in the International Business Department of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce staffing foreign relations committees. After two years, Bob found an opportunity within government in the International Relations Office of the Bureau of the Budget. He spoke of his first day in that job, February 24, 1959, as one of the happiest of his life. His second son, Craig, was born; he began a position that was “like heaven;” and he was asked by his supervisor to write a memorandum for the president’s Cabinet recommending a policy position regarding the Buy American Act. It was described by the Budget Director as the best memorandum he had ever seen! Bob had successfully begun his 40-year career as a Free Trade Warrior. In 1960, about the same time that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was elected president, Bob received the Bureau of the Budget’s Professional Achievement Award. In the interim between the November election and January inauguration, Bob joined President Kennedy’s White House staff based on his knowledge of foreign economic issues. The following year, he was recruited by the Secretary of Commerce, with White House approval, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce. During the next half dozen years, he shaped the Kennedy and Johnson Administration’s proposals for the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 and other trade legislation. He traveled around the world as foreign trade negotiator for the Dillon, Kennedy, Tokyo, and Uruguay trade rounds. In 1967, Bob moved to the private sector, as Director of International Relations in the Washington Office of Ford Motor Company. Protectionists were pressuring President Johnson’s administration and Congress to raise tariffs. The White House asked for help from free trade-oriented corporate leaders, including David Rockefeller and Henry Ford. An organization coalesced, calling itself the Emergency Committee for American Trade (ECAT). Bob ran and developed ECAT as a Ford employee during its first year. When the CEOs of the companies involved in ECAT decided they needed a more permanent organization, they hired Bob as ECAT’s Executive Chairman. With access to the immense resources of all the member companies, Bob championed fair and open trade for the next 28 years, leaving a still healthy ECAT behind when he retired in 1996, at the age of 72. Bob’s great loves outside of his profession were family life and skiing. After he and Jo separated in 1965, he continued to be with his two sons on a weekly basis, attending games, music concerts and going on ski trips. On February 27, 1970, Bob married Martha (Marty) Weirich Sorter, “the love of his life”. Marty brought a seven-year-old son from a previous marriage, David, and then birthed Timothy on November 10, 1971. Robert was proud of his four boys. Marty was a beautiful woman filled with warmth and charm and a gracious hostess for their many friends in their home in Rockville MD. Bob and Marty were told by friends that they were the best dancers in Washington. In 1980, Bob took the requisite courses and qualified to become a member of the National Ski Patrol. For 20 years, he patrolled at Liberty Mountain in Pennsylvania. After he retired, he spent some of the winter months each year with his son, Craig, and his wife, Joyce, in Silverthorne CO, where he also ski patrolled at Ski Cooper. He loved to display his 70+, 80+, and eventually 90+ ski patches on his ski jacket. He last skied when he was 92. The greatest sorrow of Bob’s life was the loss of Marty to ovarian cancer at age 74 on October 30, 2009, after 39 years of marriage. He eventually moved to a home in southern New Hampshire in 2012. His son Tim joined him there. At 92, Bob needed immunotherapy to treat melanoma cancer. Although the cancer was eliminated, his strength was diminished. A fall at home in December 2019 resulted in surgery for a broken femur, followed by a lengthy rehab, and a move in March 2020 from New Hampshire to a long-term care facility overlooking the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The Coronavirus pandemic was surging which complicated his transition to life in Colorado. His health continued to decline and three months later, he passed away, with Craig and Joyce at his bedside. Bob leaves behind his four sons, Fletcher McNeill, Craig McNeill (Joyce Copeland), David Sorter (Maurya Sorter), and Timothy McNeill; his three grandchildren: Caitrin McNeill Cullen (Peter Cullen), and Tori and Ian Sorter; his two sisters, Phyllis McNeill Stimson and Janet McNeill Hively; his cousin, June Mitchell Douglas-White; and his nieces and nephews, Richard Stimson, Carol Stimson Laird, Kathryn Hively Snider, Dean Hively, and Cameron Douglas. As Bob titled his memoir which he wrote in 2014, he lived “A Wonderful Life.”