In 1951, shortly before Neville and his wife sailed for Barbados, his brother-in-law Sam (married to his wife's sister) came to him with an urgent problem connected to his banking career. Sam, a Harvard Business School graduate, was head usher and a financial-board member at the Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue, but could not find satisfying guidance from his own minister and turned to Neville instead the evening before their trip.