OBITUARY: In Memory of Lloyd R. Neve, 91, of Blair, Nebraska
Memorial services for Lloyd R. Neve, age 91, of Blair, Nebraska were held on Thursday, May 28, 2015, at First Lutheran Church in Blair. Mr. Neve died May 24, 2015, at Memorial Community Hospital in Blair.
Lloyd was born in Beresford, South Dakota, on October 16, 1923, to Anders Valdemar (Walter) Neve and Dora Christine Larsen Neve. He was the fourth born and the last survivor of 7 children: Aster, Paul, Alton, Lloyd, Reid, Marlyn, and Ruth. He attended Beresford schools including Beresford High School, where his membership in the school band, under the direction of Mr. Gifford, was the formative influence in his teenage years.
Graduating from high school at the age of 16, he attended the Lutheran Bible Institute in Minneapolis for 1 year before matriculating at Dana College and Trinity Seminary. In 1947, he was ordained at First Lutheran Church into being a missionary in Japan. He arrived in Tokyo, Japan, in December of 1948, where he studied the Japanese language until the Japanese Church sent him to a church in Southern Japan.
Lloyd Neve is pictured with his wife Muriel Neve (Photo courtesy of the Danish American Archive and Library)
By October of 1949, he had met, courted, and married Methodist missionary Muriel Hayward. After 10 years of church planting and 6 children, Lloyd was sent to Tokyo to train Japanese pastors at the Lutheran Theological Seminary. His was probably the only household in the Tokyo Metropolitan area to keep rabbits, chickens, a goat, and 6 children on bicycles. Lloyd spoke Japanese fluently and had a working knowledge of Danish, German, Greek, and Hebrew. At the lake in the Japan Alps where the family spent most summers, the residents looked forward to the nightly sound of his baritone horn drifting across the hillside as he played hymns.
In the early ‘60s, he earned his doctorate in Old Testament Theology from Union Theological Seminary in New York. After the last of the 6 children had left for Dana College, the Japanese Church asked him to start a new congregation in Northern Japan, so he returned to church planting in 1976. Lloyd was sent back to the Seminary in Tokyo when the new congregation was ready for a Japanese pastor.
In 1988, after a year of service in Papua New Guinea and another year in the Republic of South Africa, he and Muriel retired to 2930 College Drive in Blair. He passed on his love of music and travel to his children, who have fond memories of multiple family journeys around the globe. He encouraged Muriel’s love of gardening, carefully preparing the soil for her flowers and crops.
Lloyd is survived by his beloved wife, Muriel; his 6 children: Kaj, Rachael, Nina, Leif, Kim, and Peter; and 5 grandchildren: Ian, Lucas, Stacey, Sonja, and Moira.
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