Donald Joyce Hall, who led Hallmark Cards, Inc. through a period of extraordinary growth and left an imprint on Kansas City as a civic leader and philanthropist, died on Sunday at the age of 96.
“I’ve never seen a greeting card sent in anger,” Hall was fond of saying. “It’s marvelous to be in a business where your sole efforts are directed at improving somebody’s feeling. That’s a joy.”
Hall was born in Kansas City in 1928, to Hallmark founder J.C. Hall and his wife Elizabeth.
“With my father working all the time, I was kind of in the company from birth,” Hall remembered. “We had national sales conferences in our house. I participated in those at the age of two and three. They had a great time always and included me in all the festivities, which was fun.”
Hall worked a series of odd jobs around the company. While attending Dartmouth College, he worked as an assistant salesman covering the company’s New Hampshire territory, lugging bulky sample card cases to potential vendors.
“My roommates didn’t care for it much,” he recalled. “I had these giant sample suitcases, I think I had three of those and they took up most of our college dorm room. When I’d spread the cards out on the floor, the roommates would go crazy.”
After graduating from Dartmouth in 1950, Hall joined the United States Army and served as an officer in Japan. In 1953, Hall had proposed to and married his childhood girlfriend, Adele Coryell Hall. The newlyweds settled in Kansas City, and Hall went to work for the family company.
Hall took over his father’s position in 1966 and is credited with doubling and then tripling the company’s volume during the years he served as Hallmark’s president and CEO.
“Don led Hallmark through its greatest period of growth, and our brands — Hallmark, Crayola and Hallmark Media — are beloved because of his leadership,” said Mike Perry, president and CEO of Hallmark.
“He led the introduction of new product lines and development of Hallmark’s network of independent retailers,” Perry added, noting that Hall oversaw the development of Crown Center and the company's 1984 acquisition.
“He took great pride in the Hallmark Hall of Fame, maintaining his father’s commitment to high-quality family entertainment and continued to review scripts and production details even as he stepped back from day-to-day roles with the company,” Perry said.
“The company had really been run by one man, for a long time, since birth and there was really no professional management in the company,” Hall said of his father. “So I took it on myself to develop modern management practices and operations. And it was a little difficult with a boss who really didn’t believe in those things."
In a statement, Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas called Hall a "model corporate citizen." The mayor praised Hall for pursuing the construction of Crown Center "at a time when major businesses were leaving Kansas City's urban core."
Hallmark’s markets expanded throughout the United States and into more than 100 countries as product lines diversified.
In 1978, Hall recruited corporate builder Irvine Hockaday, Jr. to the company’s board of directors; Hockaday would become president and CEO nine years later, while Hall continued as chairman of the board.
Hockaday told KCUR that Hall was “prescient individual” who could see “things in the distance that most of us would need binoculars for.”
Don and Adele Hall donated their time and financial resources to many causes, but especially to Hallmark’s home town.
"Evidence of that is everywhere: the Nelson, the Rep, KU, Children’s Mercy, MRI (Global) — these institutions benefited from Don’s advice and council as much as the money,” Hockaday said.
At the invitation of President George Bush, Don Hall served as chairman of the U.S. President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. He spent 31 years on the Nelson-Atkins Museum’s Board of Trustees, where he especially wanted the public to have quality experiences while viewing art in the new Bloch Galleries.
"Because of his quest for the highest standards, the museum has become a treasure that is accessible to everyone," said Nelson-Atkins director Julián Zugazagoitia in a statement. "What an honor and a special treat it was to visit Don at his home and see the twinkle in his eye as he told me about the latest objects on which he was bidding. His passion for art only grew stronger through the years.”
In 2013, museum renamed its outdoor green space and sculpture garden to the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park.
Hockaday retired on January 1, 2002, and the reins of Hallmark’s leadership moved to Don Hall’s two sons, Donald J. Hall, Jr. and David Hall. Their father expressed pride in the new transition.
“I’m very proud of those two boys,” Hall said. “They've taken over a tough job. I know about that job and it’s a tough one, but they have taken it over with enthusiasm and I think they are doing an excellent job with all the right sort of feelings about what it should be.”
Adele Hall died in 2013. Don is survived by his two sons, Hallmark Executive Chairman Donald J. Hall, Jr., and Executive Vice Chairman David Hall; and his daughter, Margi Hall Pence. He had nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.
“He was a giant in his corporate life, his civic life, philanthropic life, and family life,” Hockaday said. “We see lots of people in positions of prominence who are good at one, but not all of them. He may have looked like Clark Kent, but he was really Superman.”