My issue is, and I realize that I did not specify this prior, that the LED stays on for as long as it takes for the NeoPixel to complete its pulse (which I defined as 3 seconds). I actually want the LED to stay on for about 1 second and the NeoPixel pulse cycle to complete after 3 seconds.
It would have helped enormously if you had said that at the beginning, so no my code modifacatiin would not have worked.
See my reply #4 in this thread for an example of the Neopixel demo program written as a state machine. FastLED/NeoPixel examples that are non-blocking? - LEDs and Multiplexing - Arduino Forum
Then read again what we have been saying in this thread.