Neal Thorpe

1920 - 2018

Neal Gilkyson Stuart Thorpe was born February 17, 1920, in the house in Mont Clare, PA that was her home at the time of her death. She was a fifth-generation descendant of its builder, Joseph Whitaker, and she shared it with her son, James Gilkyson Stuart, and his family. She is survived by James, daughter Leila Stuart Martin, five grandchildren and two great granddaughters. A son, Alfred I. Stuart, predeceased her. Mrs. Thorpe graduated from Smith College in 1942, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. The United States had just entered World War II and her first jobs all related to the war and ranged from being a minor researcher in the War Department to a lowly researcher on Time magazine. In June of ’46 she married the late Alfred I. Stuart from Wilmington, DE. The couple spent most of their married life in Portland, OR The marriage ended in divorce in 1955, and she returned to the family home in Mont Clare with three small children. In 1956 she joined The Ladies Home Journal as an assistant editor, and over the next eight years she rose to the positions of staff writer and senior editor. In 1965 she was named Fiction Editor of Redbook. In 1970 Redbook, which at the time published much fiction, won the first Excellence in Fiction award given by the Columbia School of Journalism and the National Magazine Publishers’ Association. She was proud of the fact that it won over competition from The New Yorker, Esquire and other notable publishers of short stories. That June she married the late Robert B. Thorpe. In addition to many articles in The Ladies Home Journal, other works of hers, including fiction, appeared in Harper’s, McCall’s, Readers’ Digest and Bird Watchers’ Digest. During these years she also became a dedicated birder, and for some 35 years in all she traveled from Greece to Siberia and from Alaska to Mexico in pursuit of bird species. In 1974 she resigned from Redbook and she and her husband moved from New York to the family house in Mont Clare in order for her to assume the jobs of president of the family-owned Phoenixville Publishing Company and publisher of the then Daily Republican, a name she quickly changed to The Evening Phoenix. Her editorials of the next seven years vigorously discussed local issues and she encouraged investigative reporting from the news staff. She served on the Phoenixville Hospital board and the Board of Trustees of the Phoenixville area YMCA, and was a charter member of the Phoenixville Area Economic Development Committee (PAEDCO). She retired in 1981 coincident with the sale of the newspaper. In 1982 she was instrumental in the formation of the volunteer Schuylkill Canal Association whose mission was to preserve and restore the historic, neglected 2.5-mile canal in Mont Clare dating from 1820. Over the next 25 years she served the Association in many capacities. During this time its membership grew and the canal’s lock and locktender’s house were fully restored. The site is now a widely-known landmark on the Schuylkill River Trail. The family asks that any contributions in memory of Mrs. Thorpe be made to the Schuylkill Canal Association, P.O. Box 966, Oaks, PA 19456.