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Neal Stockton had a zeal for work even before he set his teenaged sights on owning a new car. “My father said if I got a car, that I’d have to make the money to buy it,” he said.

He was doing chores with town work crews long before he finished high school in 1973.

“I’ve worked in some manholes and even sewer pumping stations,” he said. No job was bad enough for him to refuse. “I started doing hard work at an early age. I was pulling tobacco when I was 9 years old. That’s hard work,” he said.

Cutting honeysuckle vines out of wire fencing isn’t among the fond memories of his youth. Neither was patching holes in asphalt streets, cleaning ditches — even digging ditches.

Yet, Neal Stockton took every chore in stride. Whatever the job, he said, “somebody had to do it.”

And he dared not stray from the fine reputation his father, Grady Stockton, the town’s police chief, had established.

Neal Stockton worked 38 years for the town with that same humility — and had one of the town’s most important jobs for the past 25 years. He retired as police chief on Sept. 1 and maintained his “aw, shucks” manner as honor after honor was poured on him.

Oh, yes, how about that car? “I saved enough money to buy it — a 1973 Chevelle Super Sport for $3,000. I sold it 10 years later for $4,000,” Stockton said.

Little did Stockton realize that he would follow his father as police chief when Grady Stockton became ill and retired after 16 years as chief. It was a job Neal Stockton never wanted. Yet it was one he did almost to perfection, lest he mar his father’s confidence in him.

When Grady Stockton had to give up the chief’s job, “Neal had the qualifications I was looking for, but he didn’t want the job,” former Kernersville Town Manager Kelly Almond, now city manager of Reidsville, said. “He wasn’t sure he was ready, especially in the giant shadow of his father, one of the finest men I have ever known.”

Neal Stockton had obtained a college degree while still working, although that wasn’t required for the position he had held in the police department. That impressed Almond because education was not a requirement for local lawmen during that era.

“He accepted the position out of dedication to Kernersville, its citizens and his fellow officers. He didn’t seek it and he didn’t want it,” Almond said.

Almond said during his 36 years of making appointments as a town or city manager, “The one that gives me the most pride and satisfaction was the appointment of Neal Stockton. As a chief, you couldn’t ask for a better person to work for; he treated everybody fairly and with respect. He’s family and fun to be around. Neal is a very honorable man.”

“He was always concerned about his troops and their best interest,” Ernest Yokley, a training officer and former assistant police chief in Winston-Salem, said. “The town officials there supported him very well,” Yokley said. “Neal stood tall as a man when he was police chief.”

“Working for Kernersville has been my life and my family. Since I was a little boy riding my bicycle downtown, this is all I’ve ever known,” Stockton said. “I loved coming to work every day.”

Stockton’s father passed away in 1999 and his mother, Era Stockton, 89, has been in a nursing home for several years.

If Stockton loved work so much, then why retire at age 53?

“It’s because my job was too good. If I had stayed on, it would have been because of ego to say that I wanted to be in charge or whatever,” Stockton explained. “I would not be doing it for the salary. My retirement allows me to receive the same annual income that I was making as chief ($116,00). I also have good benefits and insurance. It is time for me to do something else to help people.”

What will Stockton do?

“What that will be I’m not sure,” Stockton said. “I believe God put me in a position to be a witness to others, and I think He still wants me to help people.

“I’ve had several offers for jobs, but I think within the year I’ll know what I need to do,” Stockton said. “I believe you get out of life what you put into it, and I want to keep on giving. That’s what makes me tick — helping people.”

Contact Bob Burchette at bburchette@triad.rr.com