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James Evan Hall is an American businessman and lawyer who served as the Chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board from 1994 - 2001.

Early life and education
James (“Jim”) E. Hall was born in Union City, TN, the second son of John “Big John” Hall and Agnes Sanders Hall. He has one older brother, John Richard Hall, who was the Chairman and CEO of Ashland Oil. After World War II, the family moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, where Jim attended public schools.

In 1954, when Jim was 13, the Supreme Court passed a landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education to end segregation in public schools. Nearby Clinton High School was among the first schools in Tennessee to allow Black students to register, after the McSwain family successfully sued the school for the right to allow their daughter to attend there. Two years later, on October 5, 1958, the school was bombed in what was believed to have been a racially-motivated attack. The proximity of the controversy left an indelible impression on young Jim, converting him at the age of 17 into a lifelong Democrat. He graduated from West High School in 1959 at the age of 18.

Career
On October 25, 1968, Hall began service in the United States Army and was commissioned as First Lieutenant, serving in the signal corps during the Vietnam War. He was honorably discharged two years later, in 1970, having achieved the rank of Captain. He was awarded the Bronze Star for Meritorious Service in Vietnam in 1969.

After ending active duty, Jim became special assistant to Senator Albert Gore Sr. He served as border state coordinator during Edmund Muskie’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, ending with the Democratic National Convention in Miami. Hall also served as counsel to the Senate Subcommittee for Intergovernmental Relations, which had been proposed by Muskie in 1962. [5] While serving on this subcommittee, Hall met with Governor Ronald Reagan in California to discuss property tax reform.

National Transportation Safety Board
As Chairman of the NTSB, Hall worked tirelessly to improve safety in all modes of transportation in the United States and abroad. He visited more than 30 countries and oversaw a period of unprecedented activity as the NTSB investigated numerous aviation, rail, pipeline, and maritime accidents in the United States. These investigations included USAir Flight 427, TWA Flight 800, Alaska Airlines Flight 261, EgyptAir Flight 990, John Denver’s fatal crash in 1997, and the fatal crash of John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1999; the Olympic Pipeline accident in Bellingham, Washington; the AMTRAK crash in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and a Carnival Cruise Line fire near Miami. In 1996, President Clinton named Hall to the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security.

Under Hall’s leadership, the NTSB issued landmark safety studies on commuter airlines, the air tourism industry, the performance and use of child restraint systems, personal watercraft, transit bus operations, passive-grade railway crossings, and the dangers posed to children by passenger-side airbags in automobiles.