Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Yale Law Class of '90: The Rev. Kelly Carlson
Back in law school, Kelly Carlson was a warm and funny person, and seemed to get everything right away-- all of which came out through a quiet humility that was unusual for that time and place. I can't remember what it was that she said, exactly, but there was a moment that she made an observation that cracked me up for days. Which means she might have been the smartest of us all.
She came to Yale from Westminster, a small college-- 700 students-- in her hometown of Fenton, Missouri (a suburb of St. Louis). She graduated as the valedictorian, and chose Yale over Harvard for law school.
After law school, she went to work as a lawyer for the State Department, continuing to follow her interest in international law (she had been the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Journal of International Law). There, her work included issues related to uranium supplies, which seems pretty important to everyone.
Then, in 1993, something happened. On Christmas Day in 1993, her cousin Drew died in an apartment fire. The event shook her-- and the spiritual side of the loss played a role in her decision to leave law behind and go to divinity school, at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
She now serves as the Associate Rector at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Ladue, Missouri, not far from where she grew up. It sounds like a beautiful place, a 150-year-old congregation in a leafy suburb. Reading about it made me want to go there. There is a wholeness and peace to Kelly's story that I really admire. I suspect, too, that what she learned in law school in some way continues to inform what she does-- as does every other stone on her path.
