Ron Hall
 

My  life, since high school, has been a wonderful journey, though probably pretty mundane by most standards. Two days after graduation, I started work at AT&T in St. Louis as a communications technician. After a year, I transferred to Branson, MO where I worked as a microwave radio relay technician for another 4 1/2 years. While in Branson, I met Gayle Speight who became my wife in June, 1966. In 1967, we moved to Kansas City where I held positions in business sales, operations and data processing at AT&T. We lived in a little house in Belton, MO. Gayle taught school until our first child (Timothy) was born on 9-1-70. Two and one half years later, our second child (Erica Renee) came upon the  scene.  Gayle retired early from teaching when Tim was born and never resumed working  outside our home. I was promoted to first level supervision in 1968 and advanced to a second level manager position in 1971. After several years as a shift manager in AT&T's mainframe data center in Kansas City, I transferred to a staff manager position in our corporate headquarters in Bedminster, NJ in April, 1976.  In 1978, while we lived in NJ, Kristin Michelle came to join our family (unexpectedly, but very joyfully).

     In January, 1979 I transferred again, this time to a network engineering position in Cincinnati, OH. By this time, AT&T was on a collision course with Judge Green and the U. S. Justice Department which was determined to break up the Bell System. The good judge succeeded and, in the early and mid 1980's, AT&T went though difficult times. At one scary time, I thought I was going to lose my job to a corporate down-sizing. I survived, but I was so disturbed at the prospect of future downsizings, that were sure to come, that I decided I needed a back-up strategy. I started a remodeling business (Hall Home Services) and became a dual career guy in the process.  I somehow survived all the down-sizing and corporate restructuring in the coming years, but I also grew and maintained my remodeling business, just in
case...

In 1988, with competition in the telecommunications business a very real and formidable threat to AT&T's position in the industry, I decided to respond to AT&T's offer to expand its business network sales force. I transferred to Springfield, MO in December, 1988, but Gayle and the kids remained in Cincinnati until Tim graduated from high school and the girls finished their school years. In the meantime, we found a lot and I started building our house while settling into a new job. As luck would have it, AT&T moved me to Springfield about a year before the sales organization here really figured out what to do with me. That was just fine with me because it gave me plenty of time to manage the construction of our house. Gayle and the kids moved out in the summer of 1989, I got the house finished in November and we moved into it and still live there.

I settled in to AT&T's network business sales organization and sold our services to a number of large customers in southwest Missouri. Sales was a good experience for me. In 1995, I was lucky enough to receive AT&T highest recognition for sales success. In May, 1996, I took advantage of an early retirement offer and ended my career at AT&T.

Since that time, I have stayed quite busy with my remodeling business. I also started a new business called Hall Tele-Management, LLC, a telecommunications consulting business that assists small and medium sized businesses in managing their internal telecommunications. While I haven't entirely retired my hammer, I spent most of my time in my consulting business.

I took a few college courses though the years, I never took the time to complete a degree, a fact that I truly regret. However, we have always placed a lot of emphasis on education in our family, and I'm proud to say that the children have responded to that encouragement very well. Tim went to the University of Missouri on a full academic scholarship and graduated four years later (Suma cum laude) with his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering. He stayed on at MU for two more years and completed his masters degree in electrical engineering. He is now at MIT where he is about to complete his doctorate in the same field. Our oldest daughter, Erica, also attended MU where she completed her undergraduate degree in elementary education (magna cum laude), and met her husband, Bill. They moved to St. Louis where Bill works in sales and Erica taught 2nd grade for four years, completing her masters in the process. In March, 1999, she and Bill blessed us with our first grand child, Abby. Erica taught one more year after Abby was born, but when little Sarah came along in July, 2000, she decided to put her teaching career on hold, stay at home and raise the girls.  Kristin, our youngest, attended MU one year, then transferred to SMSU in Springfield and is working on her degree in business management.

I consider myself to be very blessed, indeed. I have had the good fortune to work in interesting areas, meet and work with a host of good people and be the recipient of many lucky breaks. I have the good fortune to be surrounded by a great family and many good friends. I still look back on my years at NHS with great fondness; I thoroughly relish the opportunities to renew old friendships in this and other forums. I look forward, with great anticipation, to our next reunion. Congratulations and thanks to all of you who have worked so diligently on this web site. What a great resource this is to, hopefully, rally our classmates to plan for a great event in 2002.  As you might suspect, I can be reached in many ways and would love to hear from any of you:

Address: 151 Blue Jay Way
Nixa, MO 65714
Email: ron.e.hall@worldnet.att.net
Phone: 417-725-1880
Cell Phone: 417-848-2249
Toll Free: 800-720-1880 (I'll gladly pay for the call!!)

Best Wishes,
Ron Hall

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