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| Affiliation | Democratic |
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| <- |
2008-01-01 |
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| Name | Albert D. "Al" Kissling |
| Address |
, New Mexico , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | [Link] |
| Born |
00, 1935
(89 years)
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| Contributor | Sarnstrom |
| Last Modifed | DFWDem
Feb 13, 2008 01:39pm |
| Tags |
Caucasian - Presbyterian -
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| Info | Biography of Albert D. Kissling
Born in Jacksonville, Florida in a Presbyterian Manse, the fourth of six children, I grew up in a strong Christian family, participating in all the church activities with my four sisters. Education was stressed from the beginning. My father was “Dr. Kissling”, one of the leading preachers and spiritual leaders in North Florida during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. During WWII Jacksonville was the hub of military bases and every Sunday there were several army, navy or marine guests present for Sunday lunch, the big meal of the week.
In school, all teachers had high expectations because of my three older sisters, one who had been the Valedictorian. My Mother wanted us to excel and placed us all one grade ahead of our age. For me, the result was being one of the shortest kids though out Grammar and Junior High School. Too often I was picked last in whatever game we played. I had to excel in order to prove I belonged. For my mother, piano practice was the appropriate after school activity, not football or the neighborhood games. In High School playing French horn in the band established a support group, and the last two years I was a cheerleader.
The summer before my senior year I encouraged a friend to work with me to establish a student council in the high school, a venture that an older sister had worked on two years earlier. We studied the charters of other student councils, met with friends and then brought our parents into the venture. After meeting with the principal and the head football coach (who ran the school), with the help of parents we won the day. It was my first political activity.
Because I was a year ahead of myself, after graduation I attended The Hill School for a post-graduate year. There I played football, basketball and baseball with youth my own age as well as trying my hand at fencing. I also was exposed to excellent teachers who prepared me well for college. At Princeton I played 150-lb Lightweight Football and fenced my first two years. In my junior year with my participation in the three major sports, my Club won the Intramural Club Trophy. The summer before my senior year, I worked as an intern in the Washington office of my congressman, Rep. Charles E. Bennett. That summer experience both piqued my interest in politics and led to a decision to go into the ministry. At Princeton I majored in history and my courses were great, but my academic life was sporadic. Nevertheless, I graduated exactly in the middle of my class.
The summer after graduation I worked in the Bay Area of California for a construction firm, doing home repairs. That fall I enrolled at the Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. In seminary I became a serious student, excelling in all classes, particularly church history and biblical studies. After two years, I chose to do an intern year at the First Presbyterian Church in Athens, GA. This experience confirmed my desire to become a pastor. My enrollment at the University to learn German enabled me to attend all the football games where I watched Fran Tarkenton lead the Georgia Bulldogs to the National Championship.
I returned to Union for my final year and was awarded a Fellowship for further study (the same one my father had won 35 years previously). The Fellowship enabled me to obtain a Masters in Theology at Union Seminary in New York, where I was exposed to the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, enhancing my understanding of theology. My educational experience was supplemented by tickets to numerous Broadway shows as well as football and basketball games, and for the first time, hockey.
After receiving my STM degree, I was ordained in my home church with my father and my theology professor from Richmond participating. That fall I sailed to Europe to participate first in an International Work Camp in Germany before attending a language school in the rural town of Brilon. In October, I began work as a youth leader at the Lay Academy in Iserlohn, Germany. This Academy focused on teaching high school youth about Hitler and the Third Reich, providing me with a thorough education on the “why’s and where for’s” of Fascism. During that year I was granted time for two extensive trips, one to the Middle East where I traveled (by thumb) for two weeks dressed as an Arab. I stayed in a Palestinian Refugee School sponsored by the Church of England and the boys guided me on two of my side trips. Then I crossed over to Israel and spent ten days, traveling with my sister and her husband. He was on a Sabbatical study program at the Hebrew University.
The other extended trip was a two month vagabond journey through Scandinavia. I washed dishes for two weeks in Sweden to pay for one week of travel in Finland.
Upon returning to Germany I participated in a clergy conference studying the life of workers. We visited a coal mine as well as several factories. We all were expected to work for a month as a laborer, and I obtained a job as a truck driver with a firm that made weekly trips to Berlin. My American passport was an asset to their crossing the border. In October I moved from Iserlohn to the Berlin Academy.
In the Berlin Lay Academy I was a “House Pastor”. My main role was as a courier to the sister Academy in East Berlin. At that time in West Berlin there was no telephone connection to East Berlin. My role entailed weekly crossings through Checkpoint Charlie to carry messages (as well as fruit and prohibited reading material such as Time magazine) to the East Berlin Academy. Though thoroughly questioned at the border on three occasions, I managed to avoid incarceration, partly due to wise advice from a friend I met at the Berlin American Church.
In the fall of 1964 my parents obtained visas for the three of us to travel through Russia, going by bus from Finland to Moscow and back out to Poland. In Germany we picked up a VW and drove to Leipzig, in East Germany, to visit a former classmate of my father. Previously I had been denied a visa twice because of my work in West Berlin. After a final conference on “Racism” in the Berlin Academy, I returned to the States.
In January, 1965, I accepted a call to be the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Searcy, Arkansas. All my worldly possessions (except my library) were transported in my VW bug from Florida to Searcy. That summer I returned to Europe as a leader of a youth exchange program. The next year at a conference on early childhood education (Christian Education has always been a prime interest) I met my wife, Beth Poe. She was a Christian Educator in Ft. Smith and in August, 1966 we were married in that church. For our honeymoon we traveled to the West Coast. Little did we know that three years later we would move there.
I had planned to work for a doctorate in Church History and was accepted at Duke Divinity School. However, in the summer of 1969, I was called to be Youth Pastor at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley, CA. After the first year I was granted one third time status to pursue my graduate studies and in 1972 I completed my Masters in History at San Francisco State University. That experience helped me to decide that I wanted to work as pastor of a congregation rather than pursue a doctorate and teach history in a seminary.
As Youth Pastor in Berkeley, I led an already planned retreat in the fall of 1969. I was surprised by the lethargy of the youth, sons and daughters of Professors at the University of California in Berkeley. After the retreat I began a small group program so that I could become better acquainted with the youth. The Senior Pastor insisted that I have support, so a therapist, skilled in group work, became my consultant. Seminary students became co-leaders of the groups. In the spring of that first year I learned that the youth on that first retreat had all been “stoned”, my introduction to the drug culture. Over the next six months through small group work with the youth, they began to “police” themselves, and in six months we had a “drug-free” program that continues to this day.
In the spring of 1979 I accepted a call to be the pastor of the Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, NC. where I served for 18 years. In 1979 the congregation of 280 was behind in their budget of $55,000, having just depleted their Building Fund in order to pay the bills of the previous year. When I resigned in 1997, the church had completed a million-dollar new sanctuary which also provided additional administration and education space. In the 90’s the congregation of then over 500 members contributed more than $100,000 annually to benevolent concerns both in the local community and throughout the world.
In my first year at Trinity, we accepted a Cambodian family as our first refugee resettlement project. Over the next decade the congregation resettled a dozen more refugee families. Through my leadership in the Ministerial Association we started a hospital chaplaincy and a community service agency (Interfaith Assistance Ministry). On my own I started a police chaplaincy program and initiated a Habitat for Humanity chapter in Hendersonville. That same year I founded a parallel Housing Assistance Corporation that has used federal grants to build over 300 houses and apartments. As a result of my involvement in the housing projects, the Henderson County Commissioners appointed me to serve on the Western Carolina CBDG Board.
During my ministry in Hendersonville, I consider as my two greatest achievements first, coaching my son’s sixth grade soccer team to the county championship, and the other, developing Mainstay, a program to assist abused women. It began as a project, working with an Elder who was going through a divorce. We set up a program to counsel other women in similar crises. A parallel program was being developed by the city to assist women caught in the web of abuse. After a year the two programs were merged and a full scale abuse center with a safe house and full counseling staff evolved. Today Mainstay is one of the strongest agencies in the Hendersonville area.
In 1998, I moved to Las Cruces to begin a new life of retirement. For two years I substituted in the local schools, particularly enjoying Camino Real Middle School and Onate High. In 2000 I accepted a call to be the Interim Pastor in Gallup, NM. During that year I worked with the community to start a chapter of Habitat for Humanity. While in Gallup I become acquainted with Native American culture, especially the Zuni and Navajo tribes. Many members in the congregation were teachers and on the medical staff serving the Native American community.
In December, 2000, in the process of purchasing a Long Term Care policy, the agent persuaded me to become a Long Term Care Insurance agent. I began working that spring and since 2001 have traveled through much of southern New Mexico, visiting in many of the small towns and rural communities. Through these experiences I became aware of the rising costs of health care and the importance of insurance for all who could afford it. Unfortunately, too many can not afford the premiums, much less the cost of care. This is one of the major problems today that I want to address as a member of Congress.
In September, 2001, Presbytery asked me to be the Interim Pastor at the Santa Theresa Church in Sunland Park, NM. While there I became acquainted with the Christo Rey project in Anapra. It was started as a Girl Scout troop, funded by Presbytery and initiated by a mother concerned for her daughter. It has developed into an after school tutoring program, and recently has expanded into a community development agency, seeking to improve life in this impoverished community. Over the past five years I have supplied computers and furnishings for the program. In 2005 I began teaching an adult English class. It had to be terminated when I decided to run for Congress. Currently I am working on plans to build a straw bale house in the community. This house will provide more than twice the space for the existing Christo Rey program. The building of the house will also give some of the residents experience in the building trades so that they can work to improve their own homes in that area. Affordable housing is a critical need in this community as well as throughout southern New Mexico.
In 2004 I volunteered in the campaign of Jeff Steinborn. In 2003 I had worked for a year on a committee to establish a Head Start Program in Sunland Park. In 2004 when everything was ready, Congress took the Head Start funds for new projects and applied them to the No Child Left Behind Bill (which was still grossly underfunded). Ironically, the action of Congress left over 1000 children “behind” in Dona Ana County alone. I knew then that for the good of the people of Southern New Mexico, there had to be changes made in Washington.
In the fall of 2006 I decided to become more involved. I “hounded” Jeff Steinborn (then the Chair of the Dona Ana Democratic Party) through the spring and summer to come up with a candidate to run against the incumbent. I was prepared to give a year of volunteer service in order to work for “Change”. Little did I expect the results of that commitment. In November, 2005, when no candidate emerged, I decided to run. This decision was met with great skepticism by the Party “politicos”. In Santa Fe when asked if I saw myself as a “sacrificial lamb”, I replied, “Not at all! I am no sacrificial lamb; I am a fighting TIGER (the mascot of Princeton).”
The campaign in 2006 was indeed a learning experience. Accompanied by a driver, we covered the District from Hobbs to Zuni, from Santa Rosa to Lordsburg, putting 30,000 miles on my “Kissling for Congress” Oldsmobile van and 20,000 miles on a rental van. Staffing and soliciting money, scheduling, and making hundreds of speeches across the District were all new, for I had never run for political office. My training in politics was in the trenches of Presbytery where I became an expert on Roberts Rules of Order. Many friends emerged throughout the District, and with the advice and hard work of many volunteers, we emerged with a very respectable showing of over 40% of the votes.
In the following months I reflected on the many lessons learned. In January I began exploring the possibility of running again. In March a letter to many of my previous supporters announced that I was again a candidate. This time we are working as a team, with many advisors scattered in the District. We have a volunteer staff, a time-line designed to get us to victory in November, 2008, and a plan to reach the voters of this District with the opportunity to choose a Representative, committed to serve their interests. If you have read this far, you are urged to join our team, and, together, let’s “Make a Difference”. Throughout my life, this has been my goal and challenge, to use my talents and energy to serve the people and to work diligently to “Make a Difference” in the life of the community
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