Peyton Ring Neal, Jr., 76, of Supply, formerly of Washington, D.C., died Friday, July 1, 2016, at the New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington.

He was born July 22, 1939, in Greensboro, N.C., to the late Peyton Ring Neal, Sr. and Olivia Davis Neal. He is survived by his wife of 31 years, Deanne Neuman; daughter Melissa Neal Reed and husband, Christopher, of Arlington, Va.; son Peyton Ring Neal III and wife, Julie, of Pittsburgh, Pa.; grandson Michael Reed; and granddaughter Lilyana Neal.

Mr. Neal received a B.S. degree in architectural engineering from the North Carolina State University School of Design, where he was a member of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity, in 1962 and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in1965. Throughout his career, his expertise and special interests were information policy issues, including proprietary rights, legal and regulatory information products and services, and space planning and design of physical facilities for the legal community. He was also a lifelong ACC college basketball fan, especially when a Tarheels-Wolfpack match meant that a victory for his alma mater’s team was a sure bet.

He began his career as a research attorney at the Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and served as assistant to the general counsel, United States Copyright Office, working on revisions that led to enactment of the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. Mr. Neal was an assistant professor of law and associate law library director at Washington College of Law, The American University, in Washington, D.C., from 1968 to 1972. After that, he was the law library director at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., until 1978 and had primary responsibility for design of the library and instruction areas of a new law center built during that time. He was also a tenured faculty member, teaching admiralty and maritime law as well as copyright and intellectual property law.

From 1979 to 1982, he managed editorial support services at the Washington, D.C.-based private legal publisher, The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc., now BloombergBNA, including information collection, indexing, the library and information center, and fee-based legal services. Prior to joining BNA, he served as the first director for Project VALID, the Virginia Automated Legal Information Database.

After leaving BNA, he was president and founder of PRN Associates, a consulting and government relations company in Washington, D.C., whose clients included publishers and dealers in public domain data who sold proprietary products to academic, government, and private sector customers.

Upon retirement, he and his wife built a home near Holden Beach, where they have lived since 2013, and where Mr. Neal had vacationed most summers and many holidays since early childhood.

Mr. Neal was a member of the American, District of Columbia, and Virginia Bar Associations and was admitted to the Courts of the District of Columbia and Virginia, the United States Court of Claims, and the United States Supreme Court. He was active in the American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, Special Libraries Association, American Society for Information Sciences, and Information Industry Association and served on the UNC School of Information and Library Sciences Board of Visitors.

A memorial service will be held Saturday, July 23, at 2 p.m. at the Holden Beach Chapel, 107 Rothschild Avenue, Holden Beach, N.C., with a reception immediately following in the church hall. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Brunswick County Literacy Council at
www.bcliteracy.org
or mailed to P.O. Box 6, Supply, NC 28462-0006.