Wilbert R Ney

On the morning of August 4, 2022, Wil passed away peacefully of natural causes in his apartment at The Blake senior living community in Charlottesville, Virginia. He was attended by caring staff and visited by loving family during his last days. Wil was 92 years old.

Wil Ney was born at home in Rockford, Illinois on November 28, 1929. He was the third child, and first son, of Hazel and Axel Ney.

Wil’s family was a large clan of aunts, uncles, and cousins, all of Swedish heritage. They celebrated birthdays together, continued many of the Swedish holiday traditions, and spoke Swedish at home. (Wil didn’t really master English until he went to school!) Wil’s best childhood friends were his cousins Denny, Chuck, and Nona. Together they enjoyed model trains, board games, and running around outside, the way kids do.

Wil’s sisters, Lil and Veva, were both older than he was (10 years and 20 years, respectively) and they adored him. They were as much additional mothers as sisters, and with his family-oriented father Wil has to have been one of the most loved children ever. Lil created a detailed scrapbook commemorating all of Wil’s accomplishments as an accordion player (he was very talented and was always tapped to play solos at the many dances and performances where he delighted audiences in the hundreds and thousands).

When Lil married, she encouraged Wil to stop by her house on his walk home from school, serving him milk and cookies nearly every afternoon. Her husband Neal formed a friendship with Wil, and the two often went fishing together or played golf.

Wil’s eldest sister Veva moved east with her husband Erland, but the congenial family relationships continued. Erland took Wil under his wing and encouraged several long visits. Wil grew very fond of his nieces, Kay, Susan, and Lois. Indeed, he loved all the children of his sisters. He enjoyed being the uncle who planned special excursions with them and brought special presents for them.

Wil had always envisioned becoming a machinist, so he followed the trade school course of education during high school and then went to work in a local factory creating steel tools such as router bits. But Wil was not destined for a conventional life. Although under 21 yeas of age, he was elected president of the union presiding at the factory and even coordinated its first strike. There he was, unable to sign legal documents because of his age, and yet making decisions about which mature family men would receive financial aid from the union emergency funds!

Wil was drafted during the Korean War, but after basic training his path diverged from the conventional again. The army put him through a battery of aptitude tests which sent him into field radio repair and the Signal School at Fort Monmouth. At one point he found himself instructing generals in how to use the new equipment. That required some diplomacy! These were very high-ranking men accustomed to command. “Uh, sir, you need to remove your thumb from that button.” This was a mistake the generals made frequently: pressing the button and issuing orders was no problem, but releasing the button so the party on the other end could respond was something the generals forgot!

Wil’s draft number had put him very near the top of the list of soldiers to be sent overseas when the war ended. So he attended Yale University via the GI Bill. His time with the radio engineers had introduced him to knowledge he’d not encountered before: physics. He’d fallen in love with the subject and wanted to learn more. College classes were both a challenge and a delight to him, but love of learning was not the only love he discovered at Yale.

One Christmas when Wil and a friend were figuring out how to manage the expenses of a trip home for the holidays, they sought two more students to share the car ride and chip in for gasoline. Jeani Salsbury and her friend Doris took the opportunity! Wil often reminisced about first meeting the pair of young ladies during a brief visit outside, when the ladies evaluated the young men as to whether they would be good traveling companions.

But the moment of truth occurred en route. Wil, in the front passenger seat, glanced into the back seat to see how the ladies were doing. In fact, they were both sleeping. But as Wil gazed at Jeani, he was smitten. They had to part in Illinois, because Jeani was catching a train to complete her journey to Colorado. But Wil told his parents: “I’ve just met this girl! I’m going to ask her out when I get back to Connecticut.”

Well, he did ask her out, and the rest is history. They courted while he studied for his bachelor’s degree and she for her Master of Psychiatric Nursing. They were married in Colorado on May 17, 1958. After a honeymoon in Mexico (during which every one of the four tires on their old car blew out and had to be replaced), they settled in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.

Wil went to work for the Bureau of Standards while attending night school at Georgetown University for his Doctor of Jurisprudence. At the Bureau of Standards, he contributed to a scholarly paper on the properties of the new metals used as gauges in the nascent space program. He also met Lawrence Taylor, who founded the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurement, a non-profit organization devoted to radiation safety. Dr. Taylor tapped Wil to serve as the executive director of the NCRP.

Wil was an able leader for the organization, coordinating the work of contributing scientists at universities around the world, editing the NCRP’s reports (upon which many hospitals and other institutions relied), and even learning the challenging art of fund-raising, necessary to keep the NCRP able to do its valuable work in contributing to harnessing radiation safely in medicine, power generation, and other applications.

Wil spent all the next decades of his professional life guiding the NCRP. He was passionate about radiation safety and the promise of radiation as a tool in modern times, and he was passionate about the NCRP. He continued to do consulting work for the organization even after he retired.

But as much as his work compelled him, family always came first for Wil. His heart lay at home—home with his wife and children (Jessica, born 1960, and Derek, 1965), and at home with his parents and his sisters and their children. He continued the habits he’d developed with his nieces and nephews for his son and daughter, exploring new places with kids in tow, and trying new hobbies such as building model rockets and creating a model railroad. When he realized that these shared hobbies tended to have a traditionally masculine bent, he persuaded his daughter to teach him to sew!

As his children grew up, Wil’s interests grew, too, but he continued to enjoy photography, stamp collecting, model building, and travel. He and Jeani traveled the world together, branching out from their visits to Europe and Japan to take in Norway, Finland, Russia, and other fascinating spots. In their later years, their adventures took on a more internal focus. They read extensively on religion and Christianity, making a deeper commitment to their faith. They joined the National United Methodist Church and attended services weekly, as well as participating in discussion groups. After Jeani’s passing, Wil became more active in addressing the issues of homeless veterans and of trafficked girls.

Wil was preceded in death by his parents Hazel and Axel Ney; his sister Veva Levine and her daughters Lois, Kay, and Susan; his sister Lil Kramer; his cousins Denny, Chuck, and Nona; and his wife Jeani.

Wil is survived by his daughter Jessica Ney-Grimm, her husband Jeff Ney-Grimm, and their children Rachel Ney-Grimm and Miles Ney-Grimm; Wil’s son Derek Ney, Derek’s wife Angela Ney, their children Savannah Ney and Sarah Fellows, Sarah’s husband Mark Fellows, and their daughter Winifred Fellows; as well as by Kit Kramer, Sharon Lester, Bruce Kramer and Barb Beisker Kramer, Nancy and George Lagoyda, and Scott and Vickie Kramer.

A special thank you to the people from Hospice of the Piedmont and the staff at The Blake for making Wil’s last weeks comfortable.

The funeral will be held on Tuesday, August 23rd at 1 pm at Quantico National Cemetery, 18424 Joplin Road, Triangle, VA 22172.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that memorial contributions be made to U.S. Vets (dedicated to ending veteran homelessness in the US, https://usvets.org/) or FAIR Girls (Free • Aware • Inspired • Restored, ending human trafficking, one life at a time, https://fairgirls.org/).

Condolences may be sent to the Ney family at www.teaguefuneralhome.com