Leonard W. Wood was born on October 2, 1900, at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay, New York, to Franklyn Herbert Hall, a coachman at the estate of Theodore Roosevelt, and Mary Garvin.
His father became chief messenger and eventually, White House librarian after Roosevelt became president. Hall was named after General Leonard Wood, a friend of Roosevelt's; his godmother was Ethel Roosevelt Derby, one of Theodore Roosevelt's daughters.
After a public school education, Hall attended Georgetown University, earning the Bachelor of Laws degree from the law school in 1920.
Hall was admitted to the New York bar in 1921, and he began an active law practice in New York City.
His political career started in 1926, when he became a Republican campaign worker. The next year he was elected to the New York State Assembly, serving for two years, until he became Nassau County sheriff.
In 1934, Hall returned to the assembly and served until 1938, when the death of their candidate for the House of Representatives forced the Republicans to choose a new candidate only days before the election. Hall was selected and won the election, beginning a fourteen-year career in Congress. Hall's congressional style was one of staying behind the scenes, getting things done in committee work.
In 1941 Hall was elected chairman of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, a post he held for a decade. Other committee assignments included seats on the Select Committee to Investigate and Study Problems of Small Business; the Coinage, Weights, and Measures Committee; and the Rivers and Harbors Committee. In April 1945, Hall traveled to Europe to inspect the Buchenwald concentration camp. This was one of many trips that he took to get firsthand information. The next month he spoke out to have Germans prosecuted for war crimes.
In 1947, while acting as chairman of the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, Hall went to Europe with other congressmen to investigate problems with facilities that supported American air carriers. In 1951 he and Congressman Joseph Martin, Jr. , of Massachusetts made a long tour of world trouble spots at their own expense. When they returned, they urged the American government to support the Nationalist Chinese government of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to counter Chinese Communist expansion.
Hall did not run for reelection in 1952. At his wife's urging, he returned to Long Island to run for surrogate of Nassau County, a high judicial post. During this time, Hall was an insider in Dwight Eisenhower's campaign for the presidency. At one point, when there were questions about Richard Nixon's campaign finances, Hall acted as an intermediary to try to persuade Nixon to resign from the ticket; Nixon's famous "Checkers" speech in his defense was so effective, however, that this initiative was dropped.
Hall won his election but found almost immediately that he did not want to be a judge. Early in 1953 he found a way out when the position of chairman of the Republican National Committee became vacant. Hall, supported by President Eisenhower and Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, won the post easily. His judicial career had lasted less than four months.
Hall's four years as party chairman turned out to be the capstone of his political career. Hall's most important task as chairman was to organize Eisenhower's campaign for reelection in 1956. This was complicated in 1955, when the president suffered a major heart attack. There was widespread doubt that Eisenhower would be healthy enough to survive a second term. Hall organized speaking engagements for the president that helped dispel doubts. While he was active in convincing the country that Eisenhower should return to the White House, he also had to convince the president himself that a second term was a good idea. Once again, Hall was involved in an effort to remove Richard Nixon from the ticket, and once again the effort was quietly dropped.
In 1956, Hall bought a large house in Locust Valley, New York, six miles from the Roosevelt estate where he was born. After Eisenhower was reelected, Hall retired from his party position and became a permanent resident of Long Island. Although he had a successful law practice in New York, Hall was not ready to leave politics.
In 1958 he sought the nomination for governor of New York, and he seemed certain to win it. However, at the last minute, Nelson A. Rockefeller entered the race, and won. It was the first election that Hall ever lost.
Late in 1958, Hall became campaign chairman of Richard Nixon's bid for the presidency. This aligned him against Rockefeller, who was also expected to run in 1960. In an interview made during the Nixon administration's final days, Hall said that of the seven presidents he had known, Nixon was the hardest working.
In 1965, Hall became chairman of the newly formed Nassau-Suffolk Regional Planning Board on Long Island. He served as chairman for ten years. After backing George Romney early in the 1968 Republican presidential race, Hall became a floor manager for Nelson Rockefeller at the national convention. That was the last convention in which he played a significant role. At the time of his death he was listed as a member of the steering committee for John Connally's 1980 presidential run. Leonard W. Hall died on June 2, 1979, in Glen Cove, New York, a few miles from his birthplace.
Leonard W. Hall began his political career in 1926 as a Republican campaign worker and was elected to the New York State Assembly the following year, serving from 1927 to 1928.
Then Hall was Sheriff of Nassau County from 1929 to 1931, and served in the Assembly again from 1934 to 1938. In 1938 he was elected to the US House of Representatives, and he served from January 1939 until resigning in December 1952.
Hall resigned shortly before the end of his final term because he had been elected Nassau County Surrogate Judge. He served on the bench until 1953, when he resigned in order to become Chairman of the Republican National Committee. After overseeing Republican campaigns for the 1954 and 1956 elections, Hall resumed the practice of law in 1957.
The six-foot, two-inch politician had a genial and gregarious political style, a vast memory for names, and an enormous repertoire of jokes.
On May 10, 1934, Leonard W. Hall married Gladys Dowsey, who had two children from a previous marriage.
