From the Summer 2004 issue of Network News. 
Posted here on 9-4-04.

Let's get acquainted

by Ken Smith

The Witherspoon Society is an interesting organization. Although most readers of this issue know that I am the new President of Witherspoon, unless you regularly attend General Assembly you probably know very little else about me. My purpose in this initial column is to fill in that gap so that you will know the context out of which my leadership will be coming.

I was born and raised in Kansas City, MO. I grew up in the Congregational Church, which became part of the United Church of Christ while I was in college. I graduated from Carleton College in 1961 and enrolled in Chicago Theological Seminary. However, like our GA Moderator, I am a seminary dropout. I married Barbara Dreyer in 1962. We have two adult sons, one of whom is bisexual, and six grandchildren. We settled in Chicago and I began my pursuit of an actuarial career. This pursuit took us from Chicago to Cleveland and finally to Detroit, where we have lived since 1982. I took early retirement in 1991, but my work for social justice didn't wait until I retired. Early involvements included marching with Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma in 1965 and being part of a congregation working on racial reconciliation in the Presbytery of the Western Reserve.

After I retired I became active at both presbytery and national levels. In the Presbytery of Detroit, I chaired both the Social Justice and Peacemaking and the Racial Ethnic Concerns Committees. I was part of a group that worked to create the Presbytery's Anti-Racism team, served as one of the initial co-chairs and continue as a member of the team today. I was elected as a Commissioner to the 1996 GA in Albuquerque. I was the Moderator of the Detroit Presbytery in 2003, which meant I was also a commissioner to the Denver GA that year.

My first involvement at the national level of the PC(USA) was using my actuarial skills to work on the issue of health care reform, working through the Interreligious Health Care Access Campaign and the Presbyterian Health Network, which I later moderated. This initial involvement got me to the 1993 GA in Orlando and suddenly the scope of my involvement dramatically broadened. I even got my picture in The Layman during a floor demonstration following the vote to make the 1978 Definitive Guidance an Authoritative Interpretation. I have attended every GA since, with the exception of 1995. I have served as the Moderator of Semper Reformanda and helped negotiate the merger of Semper and Witherspoon in 2001. I'm also a regular at the School of the Americas demonstration each November.

I hope this background information has been helpful. I'd love to hear from any of you (contact information on the back of Network News) who have thoughts about where we should be going as an organization. I'll end with a phrase that greets me as I shave each morning: justice and compassion for all.