Dr. Neal Bond Fleming, a Millsaps professor from 1945 until 1962 who influenced the lives of many students, died on June 27 in Atlanta. He was 99.
Fleming was a professor and the chair of the Religion Department at the College and then of the Philosophy Department when the two departments were separated.
Fleming said his years at Millsaps were a time of development for himself and the students he taught. “It would be impossible to say just which courses I enjoyed most,” Fleming wrote in his memoir, Of Me and My Family.
Fleming’s daughter, Mary Dell Fleming Palazzolo, B.A. 1964, presented the Millsaps-Wilson Library a copy of her father’s memoir in 2007. Fleming and his wife, Mary Louise, established a book fund in 1995 in honor of their eldest daughter and sent an annual gift to the College in memory of their time at Millsaps.
In 2006, a group of Millsaps alumni from the early 1950s met in Tupelo for lunch, and their time together led to the establishment of a one-time sponsored scholarship in Fleming’s honor.
While at Millsaps, Fleming and his family lived on Faculty Row. “We enjoyed living there, and we love the place,” Fleming said in the 2007 Millsaps Magazine interview. “People there were so friendly…That’s what I like most.”
Gayle Graham Yates, B.A. 1961, said Fleming was a beloved and appreciated professor of philosophy at Millsaps. “Dr. Fleming was Millsaps College to me and to many of my contemporaries,” she said, recalling that Fleming’s daughter oldest daughter Dell was her Chi Omega little sister.
Dr. T. W. Lewis III, emeritus professor of religion at Millsaps, said he was fortunate to know Fleming first as a professor and later as a faculty colleague.
“His courses were recognized as among the most challenging offered at the College. Yet, students loved him and later remembered him as their favorite teacher. His dry wit and good humor complemented the gentle severity of his teaching style, which was so obviously Socratic,” he said. “The student always felt his personal concern and understood his office was a place of welcome. He followed his students’ careers with interest, and even in his later years they could receive a phone call with congratulations on some event or achievement in their lives.”
Lewis recalled that Fleming and his wife took time to welcome him when he became a faculty member of the College.
“Bond and Mary Louise were the first to pay Julia and me a visit at our apartment. They came to assure us of their welcome, and Bond especially expressed his support,” he said. “On more than one occasion he would take time to encourage this young faculty member in his first year in college teaching. In that respect he embodied the spirit I came to know and treasure as a member of the Millsaps faculty.”
Fleming earned a bachelor of arts in 1933 and a bachelor of divinity in 1936 from Emory University, working as many as seven jobs to pay for his education. He completed a Ph.D. at Boston University.
After he left Millsaps as a faculty member, Fleming became dean of Centenary College. In 1966, the Flemings settled in Oxford, Ga., where he was dean of Oxford College of Emory University.
