Music was a major passion throughout Jean Hall's life.
While her late husband Paul served 52 years as a Methodist minister in various North Georgia churches, Mrs. Hall played the piano and served the churches, too.
She was the administrative staff in many of the smaller churches, typing and printing the bulletins, visiting the sick and doing whatever had to be done. Daughter Rebekah Robertson of Knoxville said her mother really "enhanced" her father's ministry.
She said her mother also "shared her love of music with all her children, and that gave each of us a great foundation for a love of the arts."
Her son George Hall of Atlanta recalled that his mother sat with him in the pews and taught him as a young child how to read the alto parts from the hymnals. "She taught all of us to love music and singing," he said.
Jean Hall of Atlanta died Monday at Wesley Woods of complications from Alzheimer's disease. She was 87. Funeral services will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Chamblee First United Methodist Church. H.M. Patterson & Son, Oglethorpe Hill, is in charge of arrangements. Donations in her memory may be made to the organ restoration fund at Chamblee First United Methodist Church.
Mrs. Hall was born and raised in Kentucky. She was an only child, but she had a cousin who lived in Atlanta, so she moved to Georgia to attend Emory at Oxford College with her. "They were the only two girls living on campus at the time and since they were the only two women, they lived in the dean's house," Rebekah Robertson said.
While attending Emory at Oxford, Mrs. Hall met and fell in love with her future husband, who sang in the glee club. She later transferred to Agnes Scott College and graduated from there in 1946. The Halls were wed on her graduation day.
Mrs. Hall loved to travel. Her son said his parents bought a pop-up camper while they were raising their family. "With four children, money for expensive vacations was not possible, but every year my parents would take us on long drives across the country and into Canada. Sometimes we would eat out in restaurants, but we mostly we just ate at our campsites."
Granddaughter Emily Vestal said Mrs. Hall was very witty and loved to laugh. "When the grandkids visited and the parents left, she would pull out her Time-Life video series of old ‘I Love Lucy' shows and we would watch back-to-back episodes and laugh and laugh."
She said her grandmother "never missed an opportunity to tell us she loved us. She had a remarkable commitment to her family," driving long distances to attend school band concerts or college parent weekends.
Her daughter described Mrs. Hall as "the ultimate nurturer. She never played favorites with any of her children or grandchildren and she attended to the child who needed her the most at the time."
Also surviving are two sons, Victor Hall and Ramsay Hall, both of Atlanta, and eight grandchildren.
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