Col. Robert McCue Hall M.D.

Col. Robert McCue Hall, MD, died January 28 of complications from pneumonia. He leaves behind his beloved wife of fifty-six years, Jane Carroll Hall, six children (Rowena Daniel Hall, of Vienna, VA; Michael McCue Hall of Austin, TX; Sue Hall of Raleigh; Elizabeth Hall Champagne of Macungie, PA; Thomas Carroll Hall, of Mays Landing, NJ; and Jennifer Hall Roettger of Tustin, CA) and twelve grandchildren.
Bob was a soldier, doctor, musician, officer, writer, historian, son, brother, father, and grandfather. He fought many good fights and specialized in lost causes; he even won a few. He was a veteran of three different wars who felt deep pride in what he had done in service of his country.
He was born on September 13, 1917, in Spring Ranch, Nebraska, to Irving and Mary McCue Hall. The family moved to Raleigh in 1931, and he attended Needham Broughton High School, where he played football and the clarinet in the high school band; he dreamed of being an orchestra conductor. He went to the Augusta Military Academy, Dartmouth College, and Harvard Medical School. He married his first wife Rowena Sidbury and entered the Army, serving as an infantry battalion surgeon with the 2nd Infantry Division as it landed at Omaha Beach in late June 1944, and made its way across Europe.
After the war he continued his postgraduate medical education in the teaching hospitals of Columbia, Duke, and Harvard. But with the Korean War looming he returned to the military, and many American soldiers owe their lives to his spending the next two years in Korea. He served with the 23rd Regimental Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division at the bloody turning-point battle of Chipyong-ni, and was instrumental in setting up the use of whole blood at the front lines and helicopters to ferry the injured to safety.
He married Jane Carroll of Oswego, New York, on November 7, 1954. Over the next years, Bob served whenever the Army called. He was Surgeon of the XVIII Airborne Corps, at Fort Bragg. He taught military medical subjects to medical officers at the British Army’s Field Medical Training Center at Mytchett. In October 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis he was sequestered with the Army’s potential invasion force, of which he was the chief medical officer. He was commander of the Army’s Medical Training Center at Fort Sam Houston, which trained all medical soldiers. He served in Vietnam in 1968 with the US Military Assistance Command, and was responsible for the health and well-being of half a million US personnel. From 1973 to 1974 he ran Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston.
During his time in the Army, he received Masters degrees in Public Health from the University of North Carolina School of Public Health and in Health Care Administration from Baylor University. He was a graduate of the Army’s Command and General Staff College, the Navy’s School of Aviation Medicine (where he learned to fly a fixed wing aircraft and a helicopter), and the National War College. He was a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine and a member of many professional societies, including the Society of Medical Consultants to the Armed Forces, from which he received its Seale Award.
He was a highly decorated soldier--by the time he retired as a Colonel in 1976 he had earned one Purple Heart, two Silver Stars, and four Bronze Stars (with V for "valor"). In 1979 the Halls moved to Raleigh, where Bob became the Director of the Wake County Health Department. Among his many accomplishments was the institution of a requirement that cats be immunized against rabies in Wake County, and later, throughout North Carolina. He was ahead of his time with his concern about development in and around Falls Lake.
Bob Hall was a loving father. He sang and read to his young children every night and played the piano and encouraged his children to do so as well. He and Jane took many trips to France, where they indulged in one of their few extravagances: French wine. Back in Raleigh, as Jane became an increasingly in-demand quilting teacher and traveled around the world, Bob assumed the role of the stay-at-home spouse and spent his time writing about his wartime experiences. He became a focal point around which other Korean War veterans gathered and wrote. He was interviewed by David Halberstam and included in the author’s final book, The Coldest Winter.
In 2010, at age 92, Bob started a blog called “Military Medical Reminiscences of Three Wars” (www.chipyongnisurgeon.blogspot.com). He wrote initially to correct the official Army version of what happened with the medical treatment at Chipyong-Ni (a battle he had been waging with the Army since 1991), but he also wrote about his World War II experiences, including traveling with the African-American soldiers of X Platoon of Charlie Company.
By this point he had become the patriarch of a huge family. They often gathered at the Hall home, where Bob reveled in the joyful chaos that surrounded him. He especially loved to sit at the head of the dinner table jammed with family members and watch, listen, and talk.
Bob was a hero for his battlefield valor and his time in the military. But he was a great man for other reasons as well, among them his deep love for Jane; his fostering in his children such values as honesty, service, and integrity; and his refusal to back down from any battle he thought worth fighting.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations be made to the Interfaith Food Shuttle (www.foodshuttle.org; PO Box 14638, Raleigh NC 27620) or the charity of one’s choice.
A celebration of Bob’s life will be held on February 12 at 2pm at the Cremation Society of the Carolinas, 2205 E. Millbrook Rd., Raleigh. He will be interred at Arlington National Cemetery later in the Spring.