Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely started as a trumpet player in the Big Band era, served in World War II, graduated from college, and worked for Allied Record Manufacturing and King Records.
(Italics denote chapters from Neely’s memoirs.)

After getting King’s pressing business for Allied in 1949, I was in Cincinnati on a regular basis. All the staff and employees treated me as if I were one of them. I’d reassess Syd’s operations for him. They were obsolete and needed to be rebuilt with new, more modern equipment much of which could be built in King’s own machine shop. King was “hot.” Good deal all around.
I was now very active in Allied government production and supervised its recording schedules in five New York studios and on Riker’s Island where the Army had a production facility. I commuted between New York, Hollywood, Washington D,C and Cincinnati. It was hectic but rewarding. I loved my job, even the travel. It reminded me of my old band days, different town each day.
Jim O’Hagan died in January of 1950. It happened suddenly with no warning, and I was promoted to vice president and board member. Mary and I moved back into our house in Woodland Hills, California.
In 1952 I was spending most of my time in the East. Mary rented our house, put her little red MG Roadster in storage, and moved to New York. We rented a nice one-bedroom apartment on the East Side at 72nd St. and Second Avenue. Very nice. Mary would help out at the plant each day. We bought an Olds 88 convertible, parked it in a garage on the corner and drove to work each day. Also in 1952 the Army asked me to reconstruct my old 16-piece show band for a concert for 6,000 American and British troops at Wiesbaden Germany Army Air Base. I wore my captain’s uniform.
Union problems developed at the Allied plant. Allied decided to get out of the state of New York and move its business to New Jersey where it built a new plant. I would be the manager. I moved my office back to Hollywood. Mary and I drove back to California, spending a week in Cincinnati seeing Syd and my brother Sam and his wife Hazel who now lived in Dayton. We moved back into our house in Woodland Hills. I began a lucky and happy time. We and some friends went up to Lake Arrowhead and the mountains above San Bernardino over a long weekend. Our son was to be conceived there.
April 26, 1956, Mary went into labor. I cut it pretty close and got there late that evening. A neighbor picked me up at the plane. We took Mary to the hospital about 7 a.m. She and John Wayne’s wife had the same doctor and were both in labor at the same time. Both of us had sons. Mildred Stone, Mary’s mother from Lyons, came out to stay with Mary for as long as necessary. I was under great pressure to get the new plant operational and still take care of my sales duties. I only got home on several weekends and then back to Jersey.
Eventually we decided to move the family to Newark, New Jersey. Mary shipped her MG to the East Coast, and I found us an apartment in a nice section of Newark. She, our son, and I were on an American flight to New York, changing planes in Chicago. The Chicago airport ground crew went on a “sit down” for some gripe. We sat in the airport for about four hours with everyone else. American was able to get us a flight, but it was going to the Newark airport and not LaGuardia. What the hell. We took it. We got in very late that night and took a cab to the apartment which I had rented.
Mary walked in and said, “No way! I want a house.”
Friends of ours, Sid Bart and his wife, lived in a beautiful upscale closed enclave called Smoke Rise in the wooded hills of northern Jersey, close to the village of Mahwah. It was 40 miles from Manhattan.
We found a small house on a hillside, surrounded by trees and a beautiful lawn. It was two stories, two bedrooms, big basement and a huge screened-in back porch. In the back were flowers and a small spring-fed pond. Mary fell in love with it at first sight. We took out a mortgage and moved in. Mary found a nice widow lady to babysit our son, and we joined the country club. I was lucky again and had a good life.