Michael Graham Neely Of Medina, Mediator `Full Of Idealism And Courage'

Tennis prodigy, Yale and Oxford scholar, investor and Seattle legal mediator from a prominent Atlanta family - Michael Graham Neely had every reason to be proud.

Literate and witty, he could turn a phrase or pen a poem. He was tall and slim, to boot.

"But he had this wonderful humility about him," said his brother Alan Sanders Neely, of Atlanta. "I think he took to heart our father's saying, `Remember who you are . . . but don't let it depress you.' "

His brother said Mr. Neely was a clown as a boy.

"Once when it snowed in Atlanta, and we were standing amazed at the window, Mike - who must have been 8 at the time - stripped off his clothes and rolled in the snow."

The man with "a look of benign mischief" started a tradition for the family males including his son, Jonathan Bowman Longstreet Neely of Seattle. They would strip Christmas day and take a dip off a Lake Washington dock.

His son took his dip early this year - Thursday, to honor his father, who died of metastatic melanoma that day at 53.

Mr. Neely "devoured" humor books and kept his humor through a two-year battle with a cancer that began as a spot under his left fingernail.

"He made people happy even when he was ill," said his wife, Diana Bowman Neely of Medina. "He had a wonderful way with words and was full of idealism and courage."

Mr. Neely's nephew Alan Neely Jr. of Atlanta, said that on his last day his uncle said, "We could get out of here, you know. We could be over the wall before they have time to check our stories."

As a youth, Mr. Neely was a tennis star, winning the 1957 Orange Bowl (junior tennis) Tournament.

At Yale University, where he captained the tennis team and belonged to Scroll and Key, he enlisted in the Marine Corps after the Cuban missile crisis.

He won a scholarship to Oxford University and earned a law degree from the University of Virginia Law School.

Moving to Medina in 1969, Mr. Neely practiced law for the Helsell Paul firm in Seattle. Later, he became a principal in Certified Manufacturing Co. of Shelton and Maney Aircraft Co. of California.

Recently, he was with Washington Arbitration and Mediation Service Inc. of Seattle

"Mike was successful the past five or six years as a mediator because he liked to see things resolved," said his brother Edgar Adams Neely III of Atlanta.

"But he most liked to see people laugh. He wrote a lot of his own jokes and gave a lot of short speeches. I guess more than anything he was a storyteller."

Other survivors include his children Heather Graham Neely, New York City, and Savannah Dillon Neely, Taipei; sisters Claire Graham Neely, Boston, and Constance Levering Neely, Griffin, Ga.; and stepmother, Ruth Neely, Fernandina Beach, Fla.

Services are at 3 p.m. today at St. Mark's Cathedral, 1245 10th Ave. E. Remembrances may go to the University of Washington Cancer Center, P.O. Box 356043, Seattle, WA, 98195-6043.