George P. Hall, 95; Retired Aeronautics Engineer, Avid Horseman

From the Nicholson & Carmon Funeral Home.

George Peter Hall of Suffield, a retired aeronautics engineer and avid horseman who coached the Kuwait Equestrian Team to improbable victory in the 1982 Asian Games, died Friday, March 13 at the age of 95.

Born in 1920 in Mechanicville, N.Y., he was the youngest child of a widowed Greek mother. Like many in his generation, he served in World War II. Among one of the first classes to earn a graduate degree in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after the war, he was part of the new wave of engineers to introduce and spread the use of matrices in structural design of aircraft to the nation’s top aerospace and defense companies. During the 1960s, he worked on the original Blackhawk helicopter and the Apollo lunar module.

In 1975, at the age of 55, finding himself forced into early retirement from his management position at United Technologies, he entered into a second act, enabling him to branch out into his greatest passion: horses. Eventually landing a position with Curtiss-Wright Corporation to oversee the construction of a massive power turbine station in Kuwait, he connected with members of a local riding club. Hired to manage its riding program, the self-taught amateur horseman built the country’s first national showjumping from a fledging group of riders. Three years later, he took his team to its first Asian Games, the region’s Olympic qualifier. The three women on his team – the only female riders in the competition – swept all three medals against riders and horses trained by some of Europe’s top show jumpers. The horse that won the gold medal - Kuwait’s only in showjumping at the Asian Games - he trained.

In his youth, he cultivated a breadth of skills and achievements. As a counselor at Camp Mascoma in New Hampshire, he canoed, sailed, built teepees and fashioned Native American headdresses. In addition to being an expert smallbore rifle and pistol shooter, competing on championship teams in and after college, he held a single-engine pilot’s license. Atop the French Alps, he learned to ski.

After graduating from the Reserved Officer Training Corps at the University of Alabama, he served as an aircraft maintenance officer for the Air Transport Command in England and France. He met his wife Anne, whom he fell in love with at his going away party watching her descend a stairway. They remained married for 68 years until her death in 2012.

Leaving MIT in 1950, he worked for Chance Vought and Grumman Aircraft. Much of his career was spent at United Technologies and its divisions. In 1958, while working at Sikorsky Aircraft, he was appointed chairman of the mechanical engineering department of the Bridgeport Engineering Institute. He retired from Curtiss-Wright and from the equestrian club in Kuwait in 1988.

He lived in Suffield from 1965 to his death, freely sharing his time and knowledge with other horse lovers into his 90s.

He leaves two daughters, Kimberley Hall-Shapiro of New York City and Lizabeth Hall of Suffield; a son-in-law, Joel Shapiro, of New York City; a step-grandson, Eric Shapiro, of New York City, and several nieces and nephews.

Services with military honors were held.

The Nicholson & Carmon Funeral Home, 443 Easst St. N. (Rt. 159), Suffield, were in charge of arrangements. Please visit www.carmonfuneralhome.com for online condolences.