Alan Neidlinger Hall, of Bath, Maine, formerly of Hopkinton, N.H., for many years a teacher and administrator at St. Paul’s School, died peacefully on Saturday, August 22 at the age of 89.
He was born on June 10, 1926, in Orange, N.J., the son of Helen Isabel Neidlinger Hall and Edwin Martin Hall. His early education was in the East Orange, N.J, public schools and later at Willington School in Putney, England, where he lived from 1936 to 1939. He graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School, Washington, D.C., in 1942, where he was Class Poet, and from Deerfield (Mass.) Academy in 1943. He matriculated at Dartmouth College in June 1943 with the Class of 1947; during the accelerated war-year 1943-1944 he co-managed the varsity soccer team, sang in the Glee Club, played varsity lacrosse, worked at the Baker Library reserve desk and as a Cohen Scholar of the Dartmouth Dining Association, and was elected to Cabin and Trail of the Dartmouth Outing Club.
Drafted into the U.S. Navy in July 1944 in Newark, N.J., he attended recruit training and radio school at the U.S. Naval Training Center, Bainbridge, Md., and served aboard the destroyer tender U.S.S. Denebola (AD-12) in the Atlantic and Pacific and aboard the patrol craft U.S.S. PC-788 in the Pacific. In June 1946 he was discharged from the Navy at a Navy center in Shoemaker, California, as a Radioman Third Class. Returning to Dartmouth in the fall of 1946, he majored in English and graduated cum laude and a Rufus Choate Scholar in June 1949. He started his 43-year teaching career in the fall of 1949 at Williston Academy, Easthampton, Mass., where he taught English and also coached soccer, skiing, and track, and served as an assistant housemaster. In order to maintain his eligibility for his G.I. Bill benefits, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania 1951-1952, where he also taught freshman English composition and received his A.M. degree. In 1950 he married Margaret Hyde ‘Merry’ Gilpin of West Chester, Pa., a 1949 economics honors graduate of Mount Holyoke College; they met skiing at Stowe, Vermont, in 1947. She died of cancer in 2003.
In the fall of 1952 he joined the faculty of St. Paul’s School to teach English, retiring from the classroom in 1992. During that period he taught from the 8th grade (Second Form) through the 12th grade (Sixth Form) and Advanced Placement classes, served twice as head of the English department and twice as the Director of the Advanced Studies Program, St. Paul’s summer school for talented New Hampshire high school juniors. He also taught English at the ASP for many years, was involved in its fund raising, and edited its newsletter. For 12 years he edited the School’s alumni magazine, Alumni Horae, and served twice as acting Executive Director of the St. Paul’s School Alumni Association.
In retirement he continued as a consultant for and contributor to the School’s publications. In the Concord community he was a director of the Concord Boys Club and served as president for one term. In the late 50s and early 60s he had been president and treasurer of the New Hampshire Council for Better Schools and was involved over the years with various committees of the N.H. Department of Education. He was the editor of Conrad and the Congo published by the Independent School Press in 1972. His poetry appeared in many ‘little magazines’ and in Good Housekeeping in the Fifties. His articles appeared in such varied magazines as The Classical Journal and Skiing.
After retiring from St. Paul’s School to Hopkinton, N.H., he was for many years a volunteer in the Emergency Department of Concord Hospital, a docent at the Museum of New Hampshire History in Concord, and a board member of the Hopkinton Historical Society, formerly the New Hampshire Antiquarian Society. He was also a lector and a member of the Bishop’s Committee of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church, Dunbarton, N.H.
He is survived by three sons: Christopher Gilpin Hall of Woolwich, Me., his wife, Sarah Hildreth Robey Hall, and their children Hannah Alice Gilpin Hall of Westport, Conn. and Eben Hazard Robey Hall of New York City; Newell Neidlinger Hall of Milton, Mass., his wife Jane Gallagher Hall, and their children Chase Neidlinger Hall, Megan Gallagher Hall and Kyle Neuhoff Hall all of Milton; and Benjamin Kellock Hall of Milton, Mass., his wife Kelly Walsh Hall, and their children Henry Gilpin Hall and Duncan Walsh Hall.