By any measure, Lionel Neptune stands as the quintessential self-made man.

Over the course of his long working career, he has made a lasting impact in a number of different fields and has worked within some of the most recognizable entities in American life.

From Procter & Gamble, to the halls of the Washington Post and a stint as the Executive Director at the Center for Working Families, Neptune is the American dream made manifest.

However, he remains humble about his accolades and speaks softly about his achievements, and even then only when asked.

In fact, when he looks back over the course of his journey, he often thinks of how far he’s come and how much he owes to his mother’s example.

“Honestly, any conversation I have about myself always starts by saying that I am Evelyn Neptune’s son,” he says proudly. “Everything about my journey is really a tribute and an homage to her.”

Indeed, the late Neptune matriarch was well known in Plymouth for the role she played as part of the Board of Education, the Washington County Public Library and the Board of Health among others. It was the kind of legacy that would shape and influence Neptune’s values and endeavors for decades to come.

Before arriving in Plymouth, Neptune spent his earliest years living in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville, an area that boxing fans will recognize as the childhood neighborhood of Mike Tyson.

Those early days in Brooklyn were challenging for the Neptune family.

“I was born in 1960 in New York. My mom was a single mother and I didn’t really know my father,” Neptune recounts. “We lived in a one-bedroom apartment. It was my mother and four kids… We were pretty poor and really we had no idea what our futures would hold… Eventually, she moved us all down to Plymouth in 1965 after my grandmother died, and we lived with my grandfather.”

Despite leaving the big city behind, rural life provided its own set of challenges for the Neptune family, albeit in different ways.

“When we moved in with my grandfather, we had no indoor plumbing, no indoor heat… So every morning, my mother had to get up and fire up the wood burning stove and give us all birdbaths before she could send us the school,” he says. “We didn’t have indoor plumbing until I was well into grade school.”

Still, the family made the best of their circumstances, with his mother delving into her work and Neptune and his siblings attending Fourth Street Elementary School before moving on to Plymouth High as the years progressed.  

Neptune excelled in school, becoming Student Council President, joining the Honor Society and playing basketball all four years of his academic career. As he looked towards college, he never lost sight of his family’s early struggles and thus set out to not only live up to his mother’s example but also chart a course for success.

“Coming from a single-parent family, and my mom being my idol, I was always focused on the fact that we really were in a very economically desperate situation. I never really had the worldview of a kid because I saw just how hard she worked,” he recounts. “So I was always hyper focused on going to college… I wanted to get a job and be able to support myself and one day support my mom and my siblings financially.”

After graduating from Plymouth High School in 1978, Neptune initially set his sights on becoming an engineer, a career that meshed well with his natural talents in math and science. As such, he initially applied to North Carolina State University however, an invitation from his best friend and future Miami Dolphins player Charles Bowser, altered his course...