Vola M. (Dover) Hall

Vola M. Hall, 74, a medical technician who spent four decades in the Cook County Bar Association auxiliary and led high school tours through Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods, died Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001, in Trinity Hospital, after having a heart attack in her South Side home. She was friendly and diplomatic, though also frank, an active woman who was perpetually involved in community or social organizations, her family said. She graduated from Washington High School in South Bend, Ind.,and moved to Chicago to become a medical laboratory technician.

During the 1950s and '60s, she worked in medical research labs that included the Hektoen Institute near Cook County Hospital, the University of Chicago Hospitals and a handful of private laboratories. She married Calvin H. Hall Sr. in 1949. Her husband, longtime general counsel for the Chicago Housing Authority, later became a Cook County Circuit Court judge.

Hall served on the Cook County Bar Association's auxiliary for 40 years, planning fundraisers, helping the primarily minority bar association to promote social justice and taking part in its scholarship programs for minority students. Beginning in the late-1960s, she also did volunteer work with the National Conference of Christians and Jews as part of a group of women who took children from the suburbs to visit city schools and vice versa. "It was interesting to her to have these young people in a mix, and to see them have a better understanding of each other, to see how alike they were," her husband said. With her husband, Mrs. Hall toured exotic locales from Hong Kong to Rio de Janeiro.

For the 12 years or so before her 1994 retirement, she served as a medical assistant for her son's private medical practice. In addition to her husband, Mrs. Hall is survived by a son, Dr. Calvin H. Jr.; a brother, James Dover Jr.; a foster sister, Ruby Joyce; and two granddaughters.

Source: Newspapers.com

04/22/2024 EJS