BENJAMIN C. HALL, CDR, USN

Benjamin Hall '40

Date of birth: November 12, 1917

Date of death: November 5, 1944

Age: 26

Lucky Bag

From the 1940 Lucky Bag:

BENJAMIN CAMPBELL HALL

Macon, Georgia

B Campbell

Blessed with more than an ample amount of gray matter, Campbell saunters casually along, taking everything in stride. Although a star man, academics constitute a lesser part of his routine and he seldom misses his afternoon in the gym. In the fall he plays Batt football, in the winter, Batt basketball, and in the spring he just plays. Afternoons find him on the tennis court, in the pool, or on his bunk. He designs super-lift planes and actually believes that someday one of his models will fly. Certain that be will make a go of whatever be undertakes, we all wish him the best of everything.

Lacrosse 4; Wrestling 4; Boat Club 2, 1; Log 1; Stars 4, 3, 2; C.P.O.

BENJAMIN CAMPBELL HALL

Macon, Georgia

B Campbell

Blessed with more than an ample amount of gray matter, Campbell saunters casually along, taking everything in stride. Although a star man, academics constitute a lesser part of his routine and he seldom misses his afternoon in the gym. In the fall he plays Batt football, in the winter, Batt basketball, and in the spring he just plays. Afternoons find him on the tennis court, in the pool, or on his bunk. He designs super-lift planes and actually believes that someday one of his models will fly. Certain that be will make a go of whatever be undertakes, we all wish him the best of everything.

Lacrosse 4; Wrestling 4; Boat Club 2, 1; Log 1; Stars 4, 3, 2; C.P.O.

Loss

Benjamin was lost in an aircraft accident near Lake City, FL on November 4, 1944. He was one of two assistant instructors along with an instructor who died when their twin-engine bomber from the Naval Air Station crashed into Pine Forest about one and a half miles north of the station.

Obituary

From the now-defunct website of the Class of 1940:

Four classmates, Campbell, Tom Nicholson, Dick Champion, and Cary Hall drove across the country to Bremerton in a 1938 Ford V-8 after graduation leave and reported on board CALIFORNIA. Mick Carney, a truly superb naval officer, was Exec. CALIFORNIA was a great ship, and service in her before the war was pleasant and instructive.
Campbell was assigned to the F Division with the primary job of rangefinder officer and a battle station in Spot 2, atop the mainmast. Coming down from the maintop after the Japanese attack on December 7, Campbell confirmed that there were seven dive bombers in the string that dove on CALIFORNIA because he had emptied his .45 cal pistol, loaded with seven rounds, one round on each plane. Who can say that he didn't shoot down the dive bomber that crashed into CURTIS, on the other side of Ford Island?
After CALIFORNIA was sunk on December 7, Campbell, with the rest of the battleship gunners, worked to install the guns from the sunken ships on the beach and then turn them over to the Coast Artillery. This duty completed, he was ordered to ALABAMA, and on the way he married Rose Willingham in Macon on June 6, 1942. In 1943, Campbell was accepted for flight training and Rose accompanied him to Dallas, Pensacola, Beaufort, and finally Lake City, Florida. During this time, their first child, christened Rosalie, was born in May of 1944. When she was four months old, Rose joined Campbell at Lake City. He was killed one month later, on November 5, 1944 in a training flight. He is buried in his family plot in Macon.
On his death, their daughter's name was changed to Campbell and she is now known as "Cam". She lives in Chesapeake, Virginia, and has two sons, Campbell's grandsons.
Rose married Winburn Stewart in Macon, in 1947, and then, after they were divorced, she married an Episcopal priest from Macon, William Parker Burns, one of Campbell's boyhood friends. Billy was a chaplain in the Air Force during WW II. He retired from the Episcopal diocese of western North Carolina. Billy died in 1985, and Rose now resides in Whiteville, North Carolina. Cary Hall and Tom Nicholson

From researcher Kathy Franz:

Benjamin graduated from Lanier High School for boys. He married Rose Gignilliat Willingham in the summer of 1942.
His father was John Ellsworth Hall; mother, the former Mary Louise Kennedy; sisters Mrs. M. Felton Hatcher Jr., Mrs. Lamar Trotti, and May; brothers John, lieutenant commander in the U. S. Navy, Ellsworth Hall Jr., and Francis.

He is buried in Georgia.

Photographs

From the Lucky Bag

Navy Directories & Officer Registers

The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.

The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.

The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together… or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.