Betty Hall
Beatrice Perin Barker Hall was an American politician from the state of New Hampshire. Hall served in the New Hampshire House of Representatives for a total of 28 years, serving non-consecutively from 1970 until 2008.
Hall grew up in New York City, where she attended Barnard College. In 1948, she and her husband moved to the town of Brookline, New Hampshire, where they started a textile manufacturing firm. Beginning in the 1950s and early 1960s, Hall began participating in local politics, serving on several boards and commissions in Brookline. Hall was elected to the Brookline school board in 1963, and in 1972, she was elected to the town board of selectmen.
Hall's career in statewide politics began in 1970 when she was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives as a member of the Republican Party. In 1986, Hall switched her party affiliation to the Democratic Party, citing the Republican Party's shift towards conservatism during the Reagan Era. During her political career, Hall was described as a firebrand who frequently bucked her party. While a Republican, Hall was seen as a liberal member of that party, and was considered to be a political enemy by conservative leaders. In the Democratic Party, Hall was a member of the grassroots base, challenging the party's establishment in a 2007 campaign for chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party.
In the 2000s, Hall became nationally known for her activism. In 2004, she was arrested for disorderly conduct for her participation in a protest against President George W. Bush; she was later acquitted of the charge. In 2008, Hall introduced New Hampshire House Resolution 24, which would have petitioned the United States Congress to introduce articles to impeach President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for their actions leading to and during the Iraq War. While the bill ultimately failed, it generated a large amount of media coverage.
Pre-political life and career
Early life and education
Beatrice Perin Barker was born on March 18, 1921, in Koblenz, Germany, where her father Joseph Warren Barker, a United States Army officer, served as the administrator of a military district following World War I. After leaving the military, Barker's father completed his education in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, receiving an academic position at the institution. He later became the Dean of Engineering at Columbia University, and she primarily grew up in New York City. This led to Barker's entry into academia, as her father's position at Columbia University brought prominent scientists such as Enrico Fermi and Harold Urey to their home for dinner where Barker would serve as a hostess. In 1937, her mother Mary died when Barker was 16.Barker attended the Horace Mann School and later studied engineering at Barnard College. She would later do graduate work at the University of New Hampshire, Boston University, and the College of the Holy Cross.
Family and career
After graduating from Barnard College in 1943, Barker worked as an engineer at Western Electric. During World War II, she helped manufacture vacuum tubes for radar equipment, and her father served as a special assistant to Frank Knox, the United States Secretary of the Navy.On May 27, 1944, she married Sidney Leavitt Hall, an engineer from Concord, New Hampshire, leaving her job at Western Electric to join her husband in Ohio, where he was undergoing training with the United States Air Force in order to fight in World War II. However, the war ended before he was sent overseas, and in 1948, the couple moved to Brookline, New Hampshire, a town of 800 people in Hillsborough County. Hall's grandmother, Florence Hobart Perin, was a resident of Brookline, and Hall had frequently visited and spent several summers in the town during her youth. Sidney Hall initially worked at Textron, and in 1951, the couple started a textile manufacturing firm called Hall Manufacturing Company, which was informally known as Hall Tote Bags. The company produced stitching for dry-cleaners, as well as steam air covers for dry-cleaning machines. Later, the company became locally famous for the tote bags they produced, as well as other stitched products. Hall and her husband were members of the local Church of Christ, and she was credited with uniting the Brookline Methodist and Congregationalist churches into one single church.
In 1957, Hall received a fellowship from the National Science Foundation. Hall served as the assistant manager for Hall Manufacturing Co. until 1962, whereupon she became a science and mathematics teacher in Groton, Massachusetts. Hall transferred to Fairgrounds Junior High School in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1964, and taught mathematics there until 1972. In 1968, Hall was awarded a grant by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement in order to start an experimental "Mathematics Learning Laboratory" at her school. She had also been invited to academic conferences, such as the Advanced Modern Math Institute, which was sponsored by Science Research Associates.
Sidney Hall died in 1987 at the age of 66. Hall and her husband had four sons and one daughter. One of their sons, Sidney Hall Jr., is a locally-known author. Following her husband's death, Hall solely ran Hall Manufacturing Co., and the company was featured in a White House symposium on small businesses in 1994. Hall Manufacturing Co. closed in 2001.
Early political career
Local politics
During the 1950s and 1960s, Hall became very active in local politics, serving on numerous boards and committees in Brookline, including the board of assessors and the town finance committee. In 1961, Hall was defeated in an election for Brookline library trustee. In 1963, Hall was elected unopposed to the Brookline school board. She was re-elected in 1966, defeating future state representative Eben Bartlett and another candidate. In 1969, Hall was re-elected for her third and final term on the school board. She served as the chairman of the school board from 1964 until 1968 and again in 1971. She served a total of 9 years on the school board.In 1967, Hall ran for the Brookline board of selectmen; however, she was defeated by Walter W. Frost, receiving 138 votes to Frost's 152. In 1972, Hall served as the chairman of the Brookline Republican Town Committee. Later that year, Hall again ran for the Brookline board of selectmen to succeed the retiring Grover C. Farwell, defeating two candidates to win a three-year term as selectman. Following her election to the board of selectmen, Hall did not seek another term for the school board and resigned as a teacher. In 1974, Hall served as the chairman of the board of selectmen.
Early 1970s
In 1970, Hall ran for the New Hampshire House of Representatives in Hillsborough County's 13th district as a member of the Republican Party. Hall had decided to run for state office because she "realized she was not accomplishing what she wanted to" in local office. She was recruited to run by Governor Walter R. Peterson Jr. Hall and fellow Republican Daniel Brocklebank were elected with 43% and 41% of the vote, respectively. In 1972, Hall ran for re-election in Hillsborough County's 12th district, and was elected unopposed alongside fellow Republican Jack Boyd. During the 1970s, Hall held multiple positions in the local Republican Party, serving as a member of the Republican state committee the Hillsborough County Republican Party Executive Committee.1974 state senate campaign
In 1974, Hall ran for the 12th district of the New Hampshire Senate, running to replace retiring Republican incumbent Frederick A. Porter. In the Republican primary, Hall faced fellow state representative D. Alan Rock, as well as Milford town selectman Frederic Fletcher, a former state senator and former member of the Executive Council. During the primary, Hall campaigned via bicycle, cycling a total of 1,000 miles through the 26 towns in the district. Hall won the primary election, narrowly defeating Rock. Despite Hall placing second in her hometown of Brookline and only winning two towns, Amherst and Hollis, both towns gave her large margins. Additionally, she placed second in nearly every other town in the district, offsetting the large margin by which Rock won in Nashua. Official sources conflict on the final vote tally: the New Hampshire General Court officially reported that Hall received 1,544 votes, Rock received 1,485 votes, and Fletcher received 1,198 votes, giving Hall a winning margin of just 59 votes. However, a recount found that the margin was actually 114 votes in favor of Hall, with the town of Amherst alone overcounting 50 ballots in favor of Rock; however, the results of the recount are not officially recorded. Hall's campaign expenditure for the primary was $1,470.While there was no official Democratic Party candidate running in the heavily Republican district, both Hall and Rock also contested the Democratic primary as write-in candidates. Rock won the Democratic write-in nomination, with official sources again conflicting on the tally: the New Hampshire General Court reported that Rock received 72 votes to Hall's 71, a margin of just one vote, while a recount reportedly increased Rock's margin to 3 votes.
During the general election campaign, Rock was heavily supported by William Loeb III, the publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, an influential conservative newspaper. Rock frequently used the newspaper's front page to promote his campaign. While Hall was endorsed by the Nashua Telegraph, her campaign did not have the media capabilities that Rock's did, and Rock ultimately won the general election, defeating Hall by a margin of 53% to 47%. Judd Gregg, then the chairman of the Nashua Republican Party, alleged that the party's campaign literature had been tampered with; specifically, Gregg alleged that an individual had switched out Hall's campaign literature from several envelopes and replaced it with Rock's campaign literature before they were sent out to voters in Nashua. However, Hall stated that she did not believe the incident had influenced the end result of the election. Hall was succeeded in the state house by Republican Dorothy Foss Colson.