Sarah [Sally] MacFarlane Neal

Sarah [Sally] MacFarlane Neal died September 14, 2024 at her home in Leelanau County in the company of family and friends. She was 94.

Sally was born in 1930 in Detroit, Michigan, to John Owen MacFarlane and Merle Angeline [Davis] MacFarlane. She was the oldest of two children.

Sally is also the niece of the late Frank MacFarlane after whom Leelanau County Road 616 was named, MacFarlane Road.

Sally was raised in Highland Park, Michigan. Following the death of her mother in 1933, she and her brother, Peter, and father lived with Esther and Keith Johnston, her paternal aunt and uncle, in Detroit. Summers were spent on Big Glen Lake/Glen Arbor, Michigan, at Wind Song, the Johnstons’ beloved cottage. Sally’s father remarried in the early 1940s to Helen Bunch. Sally graduated from Highland Park High School in 1947, and attended Michigan State College where she met her future husband, Jack Neal of Flint, Michigan. Sally and Jack were married in 1951 before she finished her degree in Home Economics, which was later completed in the mid-1970s. They resided in Detroit, Michigan until 1963, then moved to Grand Blanc, Michigan where she lived until the early 1980s. Sally moved permanently to Leelanau County where she resided until her death. She was divorced from Jack Neal, who predeceased her, in the early 1980s. Sally is the mother of three children. She is survived by: Sarah Bearup-Neal [Rod Bearup] of Benzie County; John [ Jay] Neal [Laura Yon] of Winthrop, Washington; and Peter Neal of Friday Harbor, Washington; four grandchildren; and four great grandchildren.

Sally’s life was characterized by her creative thinking, creative doing, and activism. Her homes were a testament to her interest in the visual arts, filled with painting, sculpture and other objects purchased at art fairs, or created by local artists and craftspeople. Late in life, Sally embraced with gusto the art of painting, and found a way of expressing her feelings about the world through it.

Sally devoted time, energy and resources to political and social activism — in particular local land-use issues [she was a founding member of the Friends of the Crystal River]; anti-war issues; and hunger, which prompted her successful effort to establish a soup kitchen and free lunch program in the 1990s at the former Friends meeting house/Unitarian Universalist building in Traverse City, Michigan.The local chapter of the ACLU recognized and awarded her activism in 2012. Sally created Irreverence, a clothing store in Glen Arbor and in downtown Traverse City, in the 1980s, and owned/operated it for a decade. She enjoyed 34 years of sobriety at the time of her death.

There are no funeral arrangements. A celebration of Sally’s life is being planned for summer 2025.