Florence Gertrude Loomis Hall, who died at age 108 at the Arkansas Valley Regional Nursing Care Center on Nov. 8, spent much of her life on the southeastern Plains near La Junta, raising eight children and vast flocks of turkeys.
She was born Nov. 6, 1898, the first of three children born to Sarah Ellen Suttle Loomis and Benjamin Franklin Loomis. The family lived in Fort Wayne, Ind., where Florence Loomis attended school and then worked as a secretary.
She enjoyed the camaraderie of other office workers, and occasionally tested the endurance of a particularly stern supervisor who used a ruler to make sure women’s skirts were no more than 4 inches above the floor. She spent at least one lunch hour lengthening a skirt found to be a scandalous 2 inches too short.
She married James Edwin “Ed” Hall in 1919. They spent their honeymoon on a train to Colorado, where Ed bought a farm outside Cheraw, near La Junta. The Halls raised corn and hay on fields they cultivated with teams of plow horses until Ed bought a tractor in the 1940s.
They also raised turkeys that daughter Shirley Griffin remembers as splendidly handsome bronze birds. During the week or so preceding Thanksgiving, the Halls butchered and dressed 15 to 20 turkeys a day.
“We worked day and night getting them ready,” Griffin remembered. “Daddy had a big black pot, and we filled it full of boiling water. Then we’d stick the turkey in there, hang it up, pluck it and clean it. Mother would dress it out, and leave it outside to cool.”
Years later, when her children were adults, it occurred to them that life on the vacant Plains must have been taxing for their sociable mother.
The Halls’ farmhouse lacked electricity. Water came from a well next to the front porch. The 30-gallon reservoir in the kitchen stove was kept full of hot water. Flatirons stayed warm on the back of the stove.
Eventually, the Halls sold the farm and moved to Cheraw, where it took only a few moments to walk to a neighbor’s door. When her husband died in 1962, Florence Hall moved to La Junta, where she helped start a senior center and other community groups.
Failing health forced her to move to a nursing home in 1989. Later, as she failed to recognize her visiting children by sight, they discovered she still recognized them by touch.
“I would go in and put my face against hers, and she knew who I was,” Griffin said.
Hall was among more than 500 Colorado residents who are over age 100, according to the 2000 census. Three children preceded her in death.
Besides Griffin, who lives in La Junta, survivors include sons Ben Hall, Jerry Hall and John Hall, all of La Junta; and daughter Pat Wren of Elgin, Okla.; 34 grandchildren; and “more great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren than we’ve managed to count,” granddaughter Marietta Hughes said.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-954-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
