[First Person]
“Too Tall Hall”
Ron Hall Was A Friend Of Mine
by Reviewer Rob
It was 2 a.m. in Venice Beach one chilly November night last year with no one on the boardwalk except a lone artist painting a canvas and a skateboarder cruising down the concrete strip, sleeping bag under his arm. I walked out to the top of the sand berm at the high tide line and took a photo with my phone for Instagram. The next morning Tony, a highschool buddy from San Diego I hadn’t seen in 20 years, posted a comment on it: “That’s my neighborhood.”
We messaged back and forth. Found out he’s shacked up with a woman in L.A. who’s a former lead singer. Tony and I made tentative plans to meet for a surf. A while later my phone rang. Tony wanted to get more info about what I was doing up in L.A.. Small talk drifted and we began talking about our mutual friends from when we were kids.
Tony asked, “Remember Ron Hall?” Of course I did. Ron and his older brother Jimmy lived a few block over from me and I knew him from seventh grade until 11th grade when… [Read the whole story HERE as a member, Join
I was also shocked and very sad to hear of Ron’s passing. I found out three years after the fact. I was a friend of his while we attended The University of Hawaii.
If anyone has knowledge of his mom Marge, sister Denise,Jimmy or his father Phil’s whereabouts I’d love to know as I’d love to reconnect with them after all these years. My e-mail is jgeaker@gmail.com
I’d really appreciate it!
All I can say is he seemed straight when we dated…..no drugs and only lite drinking. He must have got into some really crazy stuff. I’ve done some research surrounding his death and cannot imagine what his life was like! Sounded pretty crazy and truly out of control. Many posts after his death were people currently in his life who, to me were, in a way, bragadocious having been such a good friend and how they’d “partied together” etc,etc,etc. My thoughts……..if these friends were such good friends why didn’t one of them try to help him out? Instead. They partied with him and probably smooched off him FOR drugs. Great friends! I’m not talking about the people who wrote or who were in this article, I’m talking about his more recent friends who had to have seen him “circling the bowl” near the end. At least try. Maybe they did. It’s not easy when drugs are involved. His wife/girlfriend named Julie was shot and killed during a party in their house in Costa Rico just 1 year before Ron died…….discovered her dead the morning after. Flipping wild stuff man. Sad sad sad.