By Susan Gallagher

Robin Hall lives a high-contrast kind of life. The parish administrative assistant and director of religious education in Missoula entered church work on the heels of service as a U.S. military judge in Middle East war zones.

Hall began working at St. Anthony Parish in late 2006, the year after she retired as a lieutenant colonel in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, the Army’s legal wing better known as JAG. After 20 years in the military, she moved to Missoula with her husband, who is a retired Army officer with a Montana upbringing, and their four children.

“We went church shopping, and for various reasons, we felt most comfortable here,” Hall said during a break in her work at St. Anthony.

She had taught religious education classes at military posts, and delved quickly into parish life in Missoula. Before long, Father Gary Reller asked her to consider joining the staff. Hall works six hours a day, finishing early enough to have after-school time with her younger children. She is the mother of a fifth grader, an eighth grader, a high school senior and a college freshman.

She is pleased to have strengthened St. Anthony’s internal structure–gone is the randomness in calling staff meetings, which now occur at a regularly scheduled time–but adds that “I also understand St. Anthony has relaxed me.” Managing her life in the JAG, first as a lawyer and then as a judge during the final three years of her Army career, took a lot of gymnastics.

Her family was based in Germany and it was from there that Hall deployed for judicial work in Baghdad and other Middle East points. With husband Mike’s Army retirement having preceded hers by three years, he kept the home life humming in Germany while she was away.

Hall’s deployments to hear military criminal cases, including that of a U.S. soldier charged with murder, had her away from home for up to three months at a time, flying in Black Hawk helicopters and living rustically. Running water is among “the things you don’t know you miss until you miss them,” she said. Sometimes she heard cases in tents turned into courtrooms. She also got an up-close look at a lavish Iraq palace seized from Saddam Hussein and then used for military court.

Hall grew up in Connecticut, became intrigued by Washington, D.C., while a high school page for the U.S. Senate and then studied at Washington’s Georgetown University, followed by law school at the University of Connecticut. At age 26 she entered the Army, expecting several years of travel and adventure followed by a return to civilian life. But it was in the Army that she met Mike, and with him planning to make a career of the military, her own career path changed.

Although she has left the Army, the Army hasn’t left her entirely. Father Reller laughs about Hall’s use of military lingo. He recalls her saying a parish undertaking warranted “an A-A-R.”

“That’s ‘after-action review,’” he said. “It’s a look back at the good, the bad and what we can do better.”

Besides her work in religious education, Hall handles Father Reller’s correspondence, files invoices, orders supplies, maintains baptismal and confirmation records and answers the phone. She receives about six calls a week from people short of money for rent, utilities or food, and gives Father Reller information about the hardships as he considers how parish assistance dollars will be allocated.

Hall, often a lector in daily Mass at Camp Victory in Baghdad, is a lifelong Roman Catholic. Her mother was Catholic, she said, and although her father was not, he attended Mass with the family.

Father Reller describes Hall as “super-organized.”

It’s an attribute that comes in handy during preparations for St. Anthony’s Christmas Eve family Mass, which typically swells the church with 600-700 people and requires something of logistician to make the night go smoothly. Hall also had a key role in the 2009 children’s Christmas party at the church, drawing on her time in Europe to advance the “Christmas in Germany” theme.

She engages people well, Father Reller said, and that strengthens parishioners’ participation in St. Anthony life.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 1, January 22, 2010.