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Obituary

A lifetime of business savvy

By MARTY CLEAR
Published October 13, 2006

BAYSHORE GARDENS - Even as a teen, Van McNeel showed a talent for business and a penchant for hard work. Before college, he owned two successful businesses.

Over the years, he built a business empire, with operations from Canada to South America, including plastics companies, a mine and a hotel.

Mr. McNeel was still actively involved with McNeel Capital, a real estate development partnership, at the time of his death Oct. 4 from complications of lymphoma. He was 81.

"He had a very creative mind, and he had a knack for asking the right questions," said his son, Clayton McNeel. "He was curious and he was never afraid to try anything."

Mr. McNeel had a business edge because he treated his associates fairly and had the respect of a wide range of people, his son said. He could make connections that led to innovative solutions.

"It was rare that he did business with someone and they did not become his friend," Clayton McNeel said. "That includes partners and even competitors, which I think says a lot about the way he did business."

Mr. McNeel was a busy man when his two sons, Clayton and Ian, were growing up. He often traveled for business, but they never doubted his devotion to them.

"He didn't do all this for himself," Clayton McNeel said. "He did it for his family. He wanted his two sons to have the things he didn't have when he was young."

For fun, he and his sons spent summer vacations in Barbados, where he owned a hotel. Every winter, they went skiing in Colorado.

Mr. McNeel was born in Jackson, Miss. His parents died of natural causes by the time he was 12, and he went to live with relatives in Birmingham, Ala.

Just after high school, he made his first forays into business, running a peanut vending business and an ice cream parlor.

He earned a law degree from the University of Mississippi but never practiced law. Instead, he used his innate marketing skill to build a successful career with companies in the packaging industry.

In the 1950s, Mr. McNeel was working for a company that had an operation in Ecuador. While there he got to know banana farmers and their problems. That led him to invent a plastic product that helped improve banana crops and alleviate insect problems.

He founded Polymer International Corp. in Ecuador. Two years later, he bought a competing company in Tampa and moved his company here.

By 1989, when Mr. McNeel sold his shares, Polymer had grown to include 14 manufacturing plants operating in nine countries with more than 3,000 employees.

Mr. McNeel kept busy with six Latin American plants that produced plastics and lighting products. He also founded and directed other businesses such as a sand mine in Barbados and several Panamanian corporations.

He turned over much of his business to his sons but in 1997 started McNeel Capital. He talked to some friends about retiring but barely slowed down until his health started failing three months ago. He had been divorced for several years but remarried just last year. He lived in the Monte Carlo condominiums along Bayshore Boulevard.

"He thought he had a few years left in him," his son said.

Besides his two sons, Mr. McNeel is survived by his wife, Sherry, and three grandchildren.

[Last modified October 12, 2006, 11:32:27]