Ships
- USS Porterfield (DD-682) Captain from 17 November 1945
Neil Bruce MacIntosh was a United States Navy officer whose service ran from the opening year of the Second World War through the early 1960s, and who later spent fifteen years teaching political science. He was born in Chicago and died on 4 November 2010 in Pinehurst, North Carolina, at the age of 95.
He studied forestry at the University of Michigan and worked for the Forest Service in Montana before joining the Navy in 1940. He was commissioned an ensign. On 14 March 1941 he married Eloise Jester, his high school sweetheart.
His first destroyer duty was in the Atlantic, in Lea (DD-118). In 1943 he shifted to the Pacific. That service took him through Hawaiian waters and on to the Marshall Islands, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, in the Fletcher-class destroyer Porterfield (DD-682). Porterfield had been built at San Pedro, California, launched in June 1943, and commissioned on 30 October 1943. Through the Central Pacific drive and the Philippines campaign, and in the assaults on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, she earned ten battle stars.
On 17 November 1945, after the fighting had ended, Lieutenant Commander MacIntosh became captain of Porterfield. His decorations from the war included the Bronze Star with the V device and the Presidential Unit Citation.
He remained in the Navy after leaving Porterfield, holding a series of commands and finishing his career with retirement at Pearl Harbor. He had served from 1940 to 1963, about twenty-four years, and his highest rank was commander.
In civilian life he went back to school. He earned two master's degrees at the University of Hawaii and a doctorate at the University of Missouri in Columbia. He then taught political science at Northern Michigan University in Marquette and left the faculty as professor emeritus.
In 1982 he and Eloise moved to Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, where he played golf and stayed active with the Boy Scouts. He had been an Eagle Scout and later served as a volunteer scoutmaster. Eloise died in 1996. In 1999 he married Mary Steele, and in 2008 they moved to Pinehurst. A son, Neil Jr., and a sister, Norma Lindgren, died before him. He was survived by Mary, by sons Craig and Kent of Minneapolis, by stepchildren, and by grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was buried at Kirk in the Pines in Hot Springs Village.