If you want to know the secret to longevity, watch 97-year-old Robert Hall bowl Mondays at Allfam Bowling in Cabot.
He took up bowling in his 70s and takes advantage of the special senior rate on Mondays. Hall and his wife, Doris, 89; often play with Geoff Rushton, 91, of Jacksonville. The three met 20 years ago while playing at the Sherwood bowling alley until it closed. They are not in a league and play for fun.
“We like the sociability of the group and the exercise,” Robert Hall told our reporter Jeffrey Smith.
Hall continues to live an active lifestyle. He still writes letters to the editor and hand delivers them in person.
He was born in 1918 in Thessolon, Ontario, Canada, after the First World War. He had a 30-year career in education in Michigan. He was a classroom teacher for two years, a high school principal for three years and a school superintendent for 25 years.
Hall taught for one year until the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when he soon volunteered for the Army during the Second World War.
He was selected to officer candidate school. After graduating as a first lieutenant he was sent to the Pine Bluff Arsenal as a shift officer in munitions production.
Hall was later reassigned to the chemical warfare research lab in Edgewood, N.J.
His daughter, Vicki, was a personnel director for Redmond Industry in Michigan. The small electric motor manufacturing company moved to Jacksonville, and she relocated here. The company was later known as Franklin Electric.
In 1983, Robert and Doris Hall bought a trailer in north Pulaski County. They spent six months in Arkansas and six months in Michigan.
They move permanently to Jacksonville in 2000, when they bought a new house.
May Mr. Hall keep bowling at least till he’s 100. And keep those letters coming.
