Thoughts of Neil

Got a text from Darci this morning that Neil Kyle had passed away from a heart attack. It was shocking to everyone here – Neil is just a couple years older than me. He was our drummer at The Meeting Place and New Life when I first started coming to Voice back in the theatre days. He played on teams at IHOP, did percussion and drum instruction and was pretty good at turning a wrench, as he liked to say. Neil was the grounds guy at the Camp when I first got here. I helped him out when I could while I was working at DCDesign, and then when he left to work full time as a mechanic, he handed over the reigns to me. I remember many times helping him work on these old mowers that we had – trying to keep them running with no money in those days. We had this 1978 van we called Scooby, and I have a few memories of helping him try to get that thing running decently. I was driving it for a while until I finally found a sweet Volvo 850. When I pulled into the parking lot with it, he immediately wanted to test drive it. So we cruised through the Refuge subdivision. We stopped to talk to Deanna as she was driving through, and he looked at her and said, “Hey there miss, which way to the country club?” She did her Deanna laugh and said “What country club?” Neil said, “Well, you see, I got this fancy new Volvo here…” Then she realized he was messing with her, and she was like “ohhhhhhh that was a joke! Neil you crack me up!” We had a good laugh about that, and after that he called it my country club car. When I bought a Land Rover, again it was test drive time — so he was explaining to me the power of the differential lock feature and proceeded to drive up this hill and climb several feet up a big tree. Test drives were never dull with Neil.

Neil’s best friend was his brother Mike. They have been playing music together since they were young and man, those guys could groove. I was introduced to so many amazing moments watching them practice and mess around. They were so fun to be around – and their back-and-forth schtick was infectious. I have been to so many of their shows over the years – from cafe’s to churches to parks. They did fusions of jazz, rock, funk and even some rockabilly. There were many good hang-out conversations in the basement of Neil’s house. I am not a musician, so I didn’t have that “in” but that didn’t seem to matter… they were always cool with me hanging out with them and having theological and just general stuff of life conversations.

One thing that cracked me up about him in those days was how he drove this tiny little Ford Festiva. It looked like a little red rollerskate. Neil, Lucretia and the kids would all pile into that little car and off they would go. I remember when they upgraded to a new black Ford Explorer and Mike decided he needed one too – I think that was his first new car.

So many stories can be told — and I imagine that the folks in the bands from then and now have many to tell. But listening to the old songs from back in the day, and laughing about some of the stories with Eric tonight, my heart goes out to Lacretia and Jacqueline and Neil and Mike. Eric shared this tonight with me — “We would never know how to truly love if it wasn’t for the rain. These times of hardship teach us how to love the way Jesus does. You can’t experience love without true heartbreak. So every time, in moments like these, we have a chance to grab a hold of that agape love. I know what it’s like to lose my father so unexpectedly, so grabbing hold of the love of the Father and holding fast to the hope of eternity is what gets us through. I stand believing in faith that Neil has joined the saints who rejoice and praise around the throne. He’s experiencing perfect rhythm and the heavenly cadence…