“(He taught me) always to stick with it. You’re going to have ups-and-downs you can’t control,” MacKenzie, who played for and was an assistant under Hall, said. “You have to be disciplined and stick with it.”

That mentality served Hall well during a coaching career that spanned more than 20 years with Alpena High’s football program. Hall was there for the good times and the bad, coaching Alpena during times of great success and taking charge of the program in the wake of Black Friday.

Through it all, he kept a positive attitude, showed his players how to do things the right way and made an impact on the scores of young athletes he coached.

“Lee was a man of God; just highly, highly respected. You can’t find a guy that didn’t like Lee,” Tom Atkinson said. “He was always a gentleman; a guy you’d be proud to have your son play for.”

News File Photo Former Alpena High football coach Lee Hall is shown in a 1983 file photo.

Hall died Friday in Alpena at age 80. He is survived by his wife Sandra, four children, 11 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, a brother, two sisters and several nieces and nephews.

From his earliest days as an athlete, it was clear Hall, whose given first name was Benjamin, had a knack for football. He was an Associated Press and United Press International Class B all-stater at Charlotte High and a co-captain as a senior. He moved on to the University of Michigan, where he played three seasons under Bump Elliott from 1959-1961.

Hall was a starter at left guard as a junior and during his senior season, he became one of the team’s most versatile players. Switching from left guard to right guard because of team injuries, he started on the line and also spend time at linebacker. Elliott even had Hall practice kicking in case the team needed him to lineup at placekicker.

“With our injuries at guard, we needed Lee to change over and he’s been doing a really fine job,” Elliott told the Michigan Daily in November 1961. “He’s a good blocker and tackler.”

Hall didn’t think he had much of a chance to play football professionally and told the Daily that he would try to get a teaching position at a small high school where he could coach baseball and football. He graduated from Michigan with a bachelor’s degree in education in 1962. He later went on to earn his master’s degree from Boston College.

News File Photo Alpena High line coach Lee Hall (far left) is seen in this 1964 news file photo with head coach Mike Yedinak, backs coach Hilt Foster and ends coach Art Gillespie.

Hall’s early coaching career included mentoring a young Rudy Tomjanovich at Hamtramck High School as a freshman basketball coach.

But it was in Alpena where Hall found a long term landing spot as a coach and joined Mike Yedinak’s staff in 1964. Coaching alongside Alpena mainstays like Art Gillespie, Hall mentored Alpena’s football players as a line coach.

Almost immediately, he was lauded for his ability to get the most out of his players. He knew what he wanted his players to do, knew how they should do it and wasn’t afraid to show them how to do things the right way.

As an assistant, Hall coached under Yedinak, Dutch Schrotenboer and Jim Watters and was part of 10 winning seasons, including back-to-back 8-1 campaigns in 1979 and 1980. During that time, Alpena held a reputation as one of the toughest teams to play in Northern Michigan, but all that changed in the blink of an eye.

On Black Friday–October, 16, 1981–Alpena’s doors closed due to lack of operating funds and it would be almost two weeks before a millage passed and the district’s schools opened again.

Black Friday affected every one of Alpena’s athletic programs and football was one of those hit the hardest.

Alpena played six games during the 1981 season under Watters, going 1-5. After a 35-0 homecoming loss against Escanaba on Black Friday, the Wildcats didn’t take the field again for nearly two years. With no funds to operate with, Alpena dropped football for the 1982 season, a period in which Hall supervised weight lifting and conditioning workouts as well as informal flag football games.

Working together with members of the Alpena Booster Club and Touchdown Club, Hall worked to get the program reinstated for the 1983 season and raise money for three football teams. Players had to pay around $100 to play football in 1983 and the participation fees dropped the next two seasons.

After Watters resigned, Hall was a logical choice to lead the Wildcats, but he faced a tall order trying to rebuild a program which had no players with varsity experience. The schedule changed too and some teams picked up games with the Wildcats thinking it would be an easy way to accumulate playoff points.

A rebuilding job can be a tall task for any coach, but coaching Alpena–especially under the circumstances–was a job Hall always tried to be optimistic about.

“I always tried to look at it positively and try to convince the players we could compete with anyone,” Hall told The News in 2011. “But it wasn’t the easiest job to do. Before that, we had a reputation of being a tough football team.”

Alpena took the field again on Sept. 9, 1983, losing 34-7 to Harper Woods Notre Dame. The Wildcats finished the season 1-8 with their lone win coming against Bay City All Saints. The effects of Black Friday continued to ripple through the program and Alpena went 1-8 during both the 1984 and 1985 seasons.

“It killed the football program. It was really sad because Dutch and Jim both had to leave,” Hall said of Black Friday in 2011. “I’m not sure, we’ve recovered yet.”

Atkinson, who succeeded Hall as coach in 1986, credits Hall for leading the Wildcats through a tough time and said he (Hall) was the perfect person for the job.

“Lee was faced with a tough experience,” Atkinson said. “Lee did the best he could and did a very commendable job.”

Aside from coaching, Hall taught math at Alpena High from 1964 to 1999 and received an outstanding educator award twice. He was also a fixture at Alpena Community College basketball games where he kept the scorebook for many years. While the majority of his coaching career was spent on the gridiron, he served as Alpena High’s golf coach for one year and was an assistant under Jim Dutcher, when he coached basketball at ACC.

In 2005, Hall was inducted into the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association Hall of Fame, joining his friend Schrotenboer, who was inducted into 1982.

Whether he was teaching in the classroom or on the gridiron, Hall’s enthusiasm for teaching and attention to detail rubbed off on those who learned from him.

“Lee was very precise. He wanted things done right. He and Dutch came up together and they knew how to teach and how to (help) us get things down. It was very good for us as a team,” MacKenzie said. “Lee was a great guy and we’re going to miss him.”