PETIE AND AL HALL

Obituary written by Martin Hall

Algie (Al) Wendell Burdick Hall (January 1, 1892 to March 31, 1974) and Marian (Petie) Iva Sloan Hall (August 12, 1895 to June 18, 1989) were married in 1913 and settled in their home town of Strawberry Point, Iowa.

Al's parents were Frank Ashton Hall and Lulu Grace Burdick Hall. Al did not finish school, working to support his family by barbering, which he did from the time he was 12. In the early 1920s, he moved the family to Southern California, where he was a barber until his retirement. Al was a member of the United States Coast Guard during World War II. He was known for his kind and sweet nature and for being devoted to his family. Moving his young family from Iowa to California was a major contribution and represented great courage in his doing so. 

Petie's parents were George Washington Sloan (whose parents were adopted by New Yorkers after a shipwreck), who was a veterinarian and died in 1942, and Clara Ann Blake Sloan (daughter of Peter Blake and Elizabeth Cook), who was a homemaker and died at age 100. The derivation of Petie's nickname has been lost to history. Petie's parents lived their lives in Strawberry Point. Petie was known for her abundant kindness, was very bright and became a professional hairdresser, working with Al in their shop in La Crescenta, California.

Petie and Al had two children. Gene Sloan Hall was born December 6, 1914, and LaVonne (Vonnie) was born in 1916, both in Cresco, Iowa. Gene's and Vonnie's childhood years were spent in nearby Strawberry Point. Petie saw Vonnie fall victim to cancer and die young, and she lived to see Gene fall victim to Alzheimer's disease, laments which weighed heavily upon her in her sunset years. Gene would die just three days after Petie.

Petie’s heart was profoundly soft and kind. She had intuition as to how people felt, even anticipating how they would feel about things. Moreover, she would act on her intuition, doing what she could to salve her loved ones’ emotional wounds. She was remarkable in that way. Let me give you an example.

On what was Petie’s birthday, likely her 65th, which would have been August 12, 1960, and would have made me (Marty) nine years old, the family had gathered at my Aunt Vonnie’s home in La Canada, near where Petie and Al lived in La Crescenta, California. The entire area was hillside, and Vonnie’s home had a main floor where the birthday party was taking place, and it had a lower area where there was a family room. Somehow, I had not understood that this was Petie’s birthday, a significant birthday at that for her, and I had not purchased or made a gift or card for her. You see, every month we visited Petie and Al, so the trip there was in no way unusual. When it became obvious that this was a birthday party for Petie and that I was without a gift or card for her, I was devastated. Of all the people for me to overlook, Petie would be the last person I would want it to be. In my devastation, I quietly retreated downstairs alone, where I sank to the floor, trying to disappear as completely as possible. Somehow Petie figured out what was going on and came downstairs. She sat with me and spent considerable time assuaging my anguish. She told me the only gift she valued was my being there with her. After a while she coaxed me back upstairs to rejoin the rest of the family, still feeling sheepish and inadequate, of course, but amazed at Petie’s keen eye and kind heart at figuring out what had been going on. That day I also resolved to make sure I never missed another important day.  I asked my father to help me learn how to use a calendar so I could write down all the important days of the year and not miss another day such as this one. That event carried forward into my adult life as a structured calendaring system I still use, and it is fair to say I have not missed an important date since then. But what I remember about that day is not my calendaring system, but, rather, Petie’s kind and true heart, just one small example of her authentically gentle and selfless nature. That was my grandmother, Marian Iva Sloan Hall.

Petie was highly intelligent, more so than Al. As was typical of times, she did not allow her more advanced intellectual capacity to diminish or to reflect poorly on Al in any way.

Al was a kind-hearted man. From the age of about 12 he worked in barber shops, never finishing school. I always presumed it was economic adversity which caused him to work at such a young age to help support the family. However, I never did ask him about this, nor did I ever hear anyone speak as to why Al had quit school so young. He was definitely a qualified barber, only the 56th barber to be legally licensed in California. He was socially comfortable, amiable and very tactile. He always included brief neck massage with his haircuts. I still remember vividly the aroma of Amber Lion, the lilac-scented hair tonic he used on his haircuts.

When I was about nine, my father and I were active golfers, enjoying pitch ‘n putt golfing at a course not far from Petie and Al’s home when we would visit there. Al took it upon himself to design and install a nine-hole miniature golf course in their little home’s back yard, which was not much more than rocky hardscrabble. Al used what he had for materials, so the holes were made of counter-sunk tin cans, the score cards were made from cut-up cigarette cartons with lines he would draw with pencils to make grids for the players’ names, hole numbers and scores. Each hole was designed with a particular hazard or challenge. Al had purchased a few used putters and golf balls, so he was all equipped, and he had even painted the hole number for each hole on the back of the hole’s tin-can cup. He put considerable thought into each hole, and the net result was from my nine-year-old perspective nothing short of spectacular. Al, my father and I played round after round on Al’s little golf course. It was a huge hit, conceived and delivered with love straight from Al’s kind heart. That was my grandfather, Algie Wendell Burdick Hall.

My father, Gene Hall, grew up in the midst of this combination of kindness and sweetness Petie and Al personified. My mother, Louise Hogan, by contrast, lost her mother as an infant, and then she lost her father at age nine. She was left in the charge of her step-mother, Dora, who was equipped neither by experience nor by temperament for motherhood. Steeled by harshness, privation and dislocation, and feeling unwanted and unloved, my mother tried to stay as nearly invisible as possible until she turned 18 and could live on her own. She had no experience of a happy, safe, loving, kind and sweet family life.

My mother told me that when she and my father became serious as a couple, he took her to meet his parents. Her heart was melted by the kindness and sweetness which simply flowed from Petie and Al to Gene and her, and those feelings were authentic and constant. She told me that she fell in love with my father that very day she met Petie and Al. Now, that is a story one does not often hear, but given her history, you can surely see how that was so. She and they remained close and loving even in the years following my parents’ divorce, for that is just the loving nature of all involved.

Petie and Al are interred next to one another in Spaces 2 and 3, Lot 1224, Map F30, Immortality Section of the Glendale Forest Lawn Cemetery, 1712 South Glendale Avenue, Glendale, California. Click here for an interactive Bing map. Click here for an interactive Google Earth map.

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