Keiko Neutz

Keiko Neutz was working as a stenographer at a U.S. Army base in her native Japan when she met Carl, an American soldier.

He promised to marry her, and within a few years, he and his new wife had two children in Japan before they left to be near his family in Louisville.

Neutz was 24 and spoke virtually no English when she sailed across the Pacific. And the U.S., 15 years removed from Pearl Harbor, was not as welcoming for Japanese immigrants.

The family moved around often, but she refused to let her eight children think things were hopeless, even after their father died of cirrhosis of the liver. She taught them hard work, with the goal of pulling the family out of poverty.

“She wanted us to have a strength,” said her first-born, Debbie Taylor. Neutz, a great-grandmother with a family of nearly 50 people, died at 87 of complications from COVID-19 in March 2020.