Richard Hal Fleming

Richard Hal Fleming, 75, of Enterprise, Alabama, went home to be with the Lord on Saturday, October 10, 2026.

The family will receive friends at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, October 15, 2026, at Faithview Holiness Church in Enterprise, Alabama, officiated by his long-time best friend, David Evans, with a celebration of life immediately following. Searcy Funeral Home and Crematory is entrusted with arrangements.

Hal was born on November 30, 1950, to Richard Pearl Fleming and Ruth Metcalf Fleming, and Enterprise was home for his entire life. His roots ran deep in that Alabama soil, and he loved the community that raised him. In high school, he was a formidable opponent on the wrestling mat, displaying the determination and competitive spirit that would follow him throughout his life. After graduating high school, he earned a Business Degree from Enterprise Community College.

Hal began his professional career selling cars for Ted Averett before finding his true calling: the insurance industry. He went on to establish Center Insurance Agency, where he spent more than 40 years building a successful business and serving people in his hometown and surrounding communities. To Hal, his clients were never just policyholders. They were also his friends. He genuinely cared about people who came to him for help, and he took great pride in the relationships he built along the way.

Hal was a music lover, with a true passion for making music and sharing it with others. He was a bass guitarist in the Band originally known as the Black Creek Boogie Band, later transitioning to Bama Breeze. He and his friends spent many wonderful years playing music at local events, entertaining crowds, and making memories that would last a lifetime.

If you knew Hal, you knew where to find him every single morning. He started each day with his friends at the Waffle House. It wasn’t just somewhere he went to eat; it was a gathering place for friends, and he loved the employees.

An avid outdoorsman and fisherman, Hal was happiest with a fishing rod in his hand and a boat on the water. Affectionately known by family and friends as the “Fish Slayer,” Hal had a remarkable talent for finding and catching fish. He taught his children from a young age to bait their own hooks and take their own fish off the lines, and he filled the summers with floating the springs, jumping ocean waves, and tossing watermelons into Lake Eufaula, then waiting for them to bob back ice-cold. He loved sharing his fish-slaying secrets and a seat on his boat. However, he would never share the location of his favorite fishing holes. If you wanted to know where the fish were biting, you had to go along for the ride.

Hal was one of the funniest people his family and friends had ever known, and he never met a joke, a story, or a prank he didn't love. Life with him meant Walmart shopping sprees, enormous steaks for breakfast, and ridiculous thrift-store treasures wrapped up with great ceremony just to fool the family. Some of his best stories will have to stay within the family, but with Hal, you never knew what would happen next, and there was always a story afterward.

He could be hardheaded, but he was never hardhearted. Underneath that stubborn streak beat a heart as generous as they come. Hal would give you the shirt off his back, and more than once he opened his home to someone who had nowhere else to go. If Hal was eating, you were eating, and if he loved you, he loved you big and protected you fiercely. His compassion and generosity extended to the furry people, too. He loved animals, especially his beloved bulldogs and his Nikki.

Hal never sweated the small stuff. He was forever telling the people he loved not to worry so much, because life was too short. Not long ago, he told a family friend that if he left this world that very day, he could honestly say he had lived a great life and had a whole lot of fun. To those who loved him, he seemed almost indestructible.

Nothing lit him up quite like his grandchildren. To hear him tell it, he had the smartest, best looking, most talented, and sweetest grandchildren on the face of the earth, and he bragged about every one of them to anyone who would listen.

Hal was preceded in death by his parents, Richard Pearl Fleming and Ruth Metcalf Fleming; his grandparents Fox Metcalf and Thelma Metcalf, his brother-in-law, Barry McGaughey; and his son-in-law, Captain Neal Taylor.

He is survived by Teressa Rainey Dutton, his “favorite girlfriend” of 40 years; his daughter, Amanda Fleming Taylor (Mark); his stepdaughters, Jenny Griffin (Calvin) and Amanda Cook(Shane); his grandchildren, Abigail, Emma, Isabella, Olivia, and Sophie Taylor, who knew him as Big Daddy; the grandchildren who knew him as Poppa Hal, Patience, Xavier and Darius Griffin, Gaige Carter, Jonah and Abby Grace Cook; his sister, Thelmanne McGaughey; his brother, Fox Fleming (Amy); many nieces and nephews; and a host of friends, fishing buddies, and clients who became family.

To his family, he was Big Daddy and Poppa Hal, a lion of a man whose independent spirit, humor, and love of life live on in everyone he leaves behind. The family hopes to honor him the way he lived: by worrying a little less, laughing a little harder, helping someone who needs it, and always saving room for a little fun.