Robert Hodge Hall

Robert Hodge Hall Jr. died Tuesday afternoon, March 3 ^rd in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Born March 11 ^th , 1939, he was the son of Robert Hodge and Ella Ware (Few) Hall of
Camden, Arkansas.

An early academic enthusiast, Robert favored literature and
history, serving as high school class president before transferring to Castle
Heights Military Academy in Lebanon, Tennessee for his final year of secondary
school. He went on to attend Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas for his
freshman year before transferring to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville
where he studied history and joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity during his
undergraduate years.

As a graduate student he studied law at The University of
Arkansas, writing for the University of Arkansas Law Review and later
earned  a master’s degree in history.

In 1964 he married Juliette (Tatum) Hall and the couple moved to
Jefferson City, Missouri where Robert began a history PhD program at the
University of Missouri, Columbia while working for the Department of Higher
Education.

Robert maintained a lifelong passion for both literature and
history, teaching weekly courses at the Missouri State Penitentiary and using The Great Books of the Western World as course material for inmates. He wrote several
articles on local civil war history for the Jefferson City News Tribune
and worked on fiction writing of his own, a pastime continued throughout much
of his life, which he found incredibly meaningful.

In 1985 he returned to Arkansas, practicing law in Little Rock, Forest City and Corning before moving to Piggott, Arkansas in 1997. He retired fully in 2015, continuing to study history as he found new resources in the changing world of technology, curating collections of timeless books and ephemera for a personal library. He was engrossed in both politics and current events, an avid gardener, doting cat-owner and wonderfully attentive father to his grown children.

He is survived by his long-time partner, Dona Gurley, of Piggott,
Arkansas, his brother William F. Hall of St. Louis, Missouri and Atlanta,
Georgia, and his children: Christopher Hall, of Jefferson City, Missouri, and
his daughter Jamie Hall Ramirez of Los Angeles, California; as well as 4 grandchildren.