Hal Doby was born in Atlanta Georgia at the tail-end of the “Baby Boom” generation duirng the idyllic post war age when everyone liked Ike and positively loved Lucy. He was raised in the Candler-Glenwood area of southern DeKalb County, right between the city limits of Atlanta and Decatur.
As a young child, Hal's father would occasionally treat Hal by taking him for a ride into the downtown district of Atlanta to go see a movie at one of the city's grand movie theaters. From memory, Hal got to experience the grandeur of the Roxy, Capitol, Loew's Grand, and the Fox Theater. Later in his life, the connection to the Fox Theater would increase when he visited the Fox routinely on elementary school field trips to see speakers talking to school children about far-off places and their journeys,
After the Fox was saved from demolition, Hal found himself going on a tour of the Fox that was hosted by volunteers in 1976. The tour ended in the Egyptian Ballroom, where Bruce Sutka was overseeing the restoration efforts of that room. At the end of his talk, he made a plea for volunteers to help work on the building. A few weeks later, Hal was knocking on the doorsteps, responding to Bruce's plea. Thus began Hal's 17-year “hands-on” relationship with the Fox.
After Mr. Sutka left the Fox, volunteer restoration generally ended. Hal soon found himself volunteering as an usher during events. Hal's general knowledge of the auditorium and its layout helped him to stand out and advance within the event staff. In a short period of time, Hal was doing more than basic usher work and eventually was made a part of the paid event staff.
In 1981, the Atlanta Women's Chamber of Commerce, Fine Arts Division, approached the management of the Fox Theatre with their interest to form a new group that could function to benefit the Fox. General Manager Ed Niess and Jo Ann White conceived the idea of Friends of the Fox Theatre, a non-profit volunteer restoration group that would work with the Fox's Restoration Director, Rick Flinn. The group would meet on a monthly basis to perform actual restoration and clerical work under Mr. Flinn's supervision.
Because Hal preferred restoration work, he turned all of his attentions to FOF and left the event staff. By the end of the first year, Hal was asked to become the group's Restoration Manager and Vice-President of FOF, which he held for two years. In the fourth year of the group's existence, FOF became an independent group. Hal was elected the first non-AWCoC President. He served in this capacity from 1984 until the end of 1990 when he did not run for re-election.
By that time, the Fox's income had grown to a point where most of the projects that FOF had been doing were being done by the Fox's paid restoration staff. FOF turned its efforts towards sorting out and cataloging the Fox's internal archives, which up to that time, had never been properly sorted or cataloged. This work eventually took FOF to the Atlanta Public Library where it spent over a year searching the archives of the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution for newspaper articles that talked about the Fox as it was being conceived, erected, and operated over the years. In 1992, Rick Flinn resigned as the Fox's Restoration Director. His successor, Mary Katherine Martin decided she had no use for Friends of the Fox. FOF ended its affiliations with the Fox Theater in early 1993.
By that time, Friends of the Fox, who once had its membership number over 200 people, was now down to about 20 people. These were core die-hards of the group and they had developed many lifelong and deep friendships. The group decided to remain together as a body and since 1993, they meet on a quarterly basis for a weekend brunch. In 2010, the membership of Friends of the Fox is now down to 9 members that are in regular attendance.
Professionally, Hal pursued a career in
business management as well as Radio-Television Electronics. At the
beginning of the 1980s, the field of computing blossomed when IBM
introduced its Personal Computer. At the that time, Hal was
a production manager for a local small business, Action Awards. Hal
self-taught himself the things he needed to know about the new computer
technology and soon became responsible for the growing company's
technology needs. In time, Hal was named Vice-President of
Information Technology about the same time after Action Awards was
named one of the top 500 small businesses in the United States by
Inc. Magazine. Hal is currently in his 28th year at Action
Awards.
When not at work or at the Fox, Hal has
had a deep love of automobiles and motorcycles. During the 1980s and
1990s, Hal was deeply involved in the British Motor Car community.
Hal participated in both local, regional, and national sports car
clubs and events. He became the Newsletter Editor for the Georgia
Triumph Association, and later its Director. Hal served two years as
a staff member of the Vintage Triumph Register. Hal was also the
VTR's chairman for the 1992 VTR National Convention that was held in
Savannah, Georgia. He founded the Atlanta Rider's Group, a local
motorcycle club and was its President for 3 years. Later, he became
the Newsletter Editor for the Atlanta Chapter of the Peachtree
Chapter, BMW Car Club of America.
By the start of the new millennia, Hal withdrew from many of the groups he was involved in. In 2002, he was told that Georgia Public Broadcasting was developing a documentary on the Fox Theatre and was putting a call out for people that had been involved with the Fox. Hal contacted GPB and went to its offices to be interviewed. During his time with FOF, Hal almost always carried a camera with him and had collected an extensive amount of photographs of the Fox and the FOF members. GPB used a very large number of these photographs and they were used throughout the documentary. Of the 45 minute interview Hal gave, about twenty seconds of that were shown in the presentation.
Hal established a personal web site in 1995 on the quickly expanding World Wide Web. Part of that site was a “tribute” section to the Atlanta Fox Theatre. Hal kept the web site up for several years until 2002. After his experience with GPB, Hal was inspired to re-establish his web presence with the Fox tribute site being the main portion of the site. His new Fox content was heavily revised and was constantly visited by people looking for information on the Fox.
After the 75th Anniversary of the Fox's opening, Hal decided to volunteer his services to the Atlanta Preservation Center to give public tours of the Fox. After a year, Hal left the group due to differences of opinion with APC management. In 2009, Hal temporarily shuttered his web presence because it was then located on a site that was domained with the "de" domain intended for things relating to Germany. Hal re-instated his dobywood.com domain and that is now being re-established. After a two-year absence my Fox tribute site is in the process of relaunching and being even bigger and better than ever.