Kathryn Campbell's Family

Elizabeth (Beth) Aileen Allison, Kathy's oldest child, spent her early years moving from city to city with her parents as her father's employment required. Some of her earliest memories are of the area around Guntersville, Alabama where she spent much time the wood and near the lake. She had an early fondness for animals and attached Reddy, a home-less and roving Dachshund, to the family.

The family ended up in Glenwood, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri where the cello lessons were as much required as was good school results. Preparation of a paper for a life science class led to the discovery of the limited life of veal calves. That was her first, but not last, concern for environmental issues and the values behind them and has been a major factor in her academic and professional career.

In 1986, she completed high school but delayed college for one year.  Part of that year was spent as a volunteer shepherd with Heifer Project International at a ranch near Perryville, Arkansas. While there she met future president William Clinton. And there was time spent in Washington, D.C.as a soup kitchen volunteer with Community for Creative Non-Violence.  She portrayed her concern for the homeless by sleeping on a heating grate with actor Martin Sheen and others.

 She graduated cum laude in 1991 from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts with a Bachelor of Arts in Religion and a concentration in environmental studies. One semester during undergraduate was spent studying in Nepal.

 Ongoing concern for the environment nationally and internationally led Beth to California. There, she spent time as a coordinator of a statewide AmeriCorps program organizing idealistic adults to address environmental issues. Observing that religious and spiritual beliefs motivated many of the volunteers, Beth entered Yale University for masters' degrees in environmental management and religious ethics. The research for her Master's was done in Bhutan which is in the Himalayan Mountains in Southern Asia. She had noted the longevity of the forests of Bhutan and wanted explore the cultural values that might allow that. She was a Fulbright fellow in Nepal, studying natural sacred places and their protection. In 2004 she began studies for a PhD in Environmental Science. She enters the California Institute of Internal Studies in San Francisco as an assistant professor in fall 2009.

 Robert Scott Allison (Rob) was the first son and second child of Kathryn and William. While Beth played the cello, Rob was the first violinist and his brother Chris was the second. Rob felt that he led a rather normal life as he was growing up. There were camping and hiking as part of the family tradition. And he was interested in helping the less fortunate as evidenced by his high school summers when he would paint houses for people who could not afford professional painters. And his church youth group was into doling good works for the needy.

However Rob was influenced by the negative that he saw in government as he was growing up.  It was always his feeling that government should be the thing that is done in the best possible manner. But in the interim, college beckoned after high school and he entered Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. north of New York City and on the east side of the Hudson River. There was time taken from college studies to investigate life and Rob spent a year on a small farm in central Massachusetts living simply doling farm work. The simplicity of farm living was enticing.

But Rob returned to Vassar, completed studies and earned his diploma with a major in political science. He graduated in 1994. From there, he became a Peace Corps volunteer and spent two years in the Dominican Republic where he met the poorest people that he had ever known. Back in the State, he worked on drinking water issues at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. With all the experiences that he had undergone, he made the choice to enter the Foreign Service in 2001. His first assignment was to Salvador. Then he was assigned to Iraq and worked with the Baghdad city government and.  Lastly, he covered political-military issues in Madrid, Spain. While his time in over-seas operations was drawing to a close and he was scheduled for two years at the home office in Washington, D.C., he met Paloma, an attorney in Madrid and was luck enough that she was willing to, and did, marry him before they left Spain for the United States. Rob continues in the Foreign Service. Paloma, happily adjusted to America, is in a one year law program so that she can get admitted in the United States.

Christopher Campbell Allison, like his siblings, spent much of his earlier years in the St. Louis, Missouri area but ended up at St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he graduated in 1997 with a Liberal Arts Degree.  Looking for work, he took a position as an English teacher in a rural village in Japan.  As he said, "I spoke no Japanese, had no qualifications as a teacher and had eaten sushi just once", but he was off to Japan for three years. Then, back to the States, he found work in New York City with the Japan External Trade Organization since he now spoke some Japanese and would work for coolie wages. He also meant his future wife, Beth Rollins, who was the landlady of the apartment in which he lived in Brooklyn.

At some point, he applied to several competitive law schools but as an alternative, he had also taken and passed the Foreign Service exam and was accepted as a Foreign Service Officer, returning to Japan as Staff Aide to the U S Ambassador to Japan. While first back in Japan, his duties involved   reviewing passport applications in an office in the basement of the Embassy. Then came the move as the Ambassador's Aide. Co-incidentally, the ambassador's son was currently attending St. John's College.  Prior to the return to Japan, there was also a two year stint in India and a learning curve on visa fraud and its impact on the American software industry.

 Chris and Beth are nearing the end of their four years in Japan and will be back in Washington, D.C., with their two year old son, Max Abner, for a two years+ stint at the home office.

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