Hall's love of history shared

by Mary Le Arneal
Published 8/13/25

Cecilia Vojtech Hall has lived all her life, well, except for a few years away for school or jobs, in the hills of Morse Bluff. She is a 1962 graduate of North Bend High School and retired from teaching in local schools in 2010. In that time she has been exposed to or taken part in a lot of area history.

Cec Hall and history have long been intertwined. She has been the writer of the Looking Back columns that appear weekly in the North Bend Eagle for 15 years.

Hall attended the University of Nebraska (-Lincoln, before it had the -Lincoln tag) with plans to become a Latin teacher. She graduated in 1968 with a degree in history and minor in English and her teaching certificate. After her junior year Cec married her high school sweetheart, Jerry Hall. They taught in Leigh for three years where Cec organized an elementary library. Cec later taught in Weeping Water where she also established an elementary library.

In 1979 the Hall family moved back to the Vojtech home place in Morse Bluff. Jerry started a construction business and Cec worked at North Bend Elementary half-time establishing an elementary library. Hall kept adding hours and jobs until she was named head teacher, an administrative position, and media specialist in 1985. She continued in this position until a full-time principal was hired in 1988. Hall continued working full time teaching reading and writing classes, high ability learners and some classes at the high school.

In 2002 an addition was built to add a computer lab and medial center to the elementary school. Hall participated in the design of these rooms.

In 2010 Cec Hall, 66, retired from teaching. When asked what she was going to do, she replied “Catch up with kids and grandkids.”
She substitute taught three times, but her life was too busy for that.

“I missed the kids, but not the paperwork,” Hall said.
In August 2010 Hall saw an ad in the North Bend Eagle looking for a researcher. She talked it over with her husband and they decided she would enjoy doing it.

She initially would do all the research in the old Eagles at the library.

She wanted more information so bought an Ancestry.com memebrship to help her. Hall now subscribes to and uses Fold3.com (military records); Newspapers.com (helpful for obituaries, marriage licenses, birth records, odd bits of family news); FindAGrave.com as resources.

“We don’t smoke or drink,” Hall said, “but we spend our money on Jerry’s tools or my genealogy programs.”

Hall has a routine that she sticks to each week.

On Sunday she makes two copies of the Looking Back from 10 years ago. One she cuts up to paste on a blank piece of paper so she has room for updates and additions.
Hall has noted that sometim

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