The Reverend Walter Donald Kring died suddenly on January
15, 1999 at his home in East Brookfield, Massachusetts.
He would have been 83 years of age on March 10.
A native of Lakewood, Ohio, Mr. Kring graduated Phi Beta
Kappa from Occidental College in 1937 and from Harvard
Divinity School in 1940. He served the First Unitarian
Church in Worcester, Massachusetts from 1946 to 1955;
the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York, New York
from 1955 to 1978 (designated minister emeritus in 1978);
and the Eliot Church of South Natick, Massachusetts from
1982 to 1997 (designated minister emeritus by the congregation
in May 1997). Mr. Kring served as interim minister in
Grafton, Massachusetts and Exeter, New Hampshire. He also
served as a chaplain in the United States Navy. The Reverend
Dr. Forrest Church, his successor at All Souls, observed,
"In the Unitarian Universalist movement few ministers
over the past 60 years have served with such steadiness
and distinction, both in terms of theological perceptiveness
and institutional devotion.
Active in denominational affairs, he served as secretary
of the American Unitarian Association, a trustee of the
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, and president
of the Board of Trustees of Beacon Press.
A dedicated historian and author, Mr. Kring published
Liberals Among the Orthodox: Unitarian Beginnings in
New York City, 1819 - 1839 in 1974, Henry Whitney
Bellows in 1979, and Herman Melville's Religious
Journey in 1997.
From the Unitarian Universalist Association, 1999-2000
Directory.
Autobiographical Reflection
Walter Donald Kring was born in Lakewood, Ohio on March
10, 1916. The family moved to California just in time
to face the Great Depression and the Long Beach earthquake,
the second worst earthquake in modern times.
 |
| The
celebration of the 150th anniversary of All Souls'
Church in 1969 |
Walter
Donald went to Occidental College. In college, Walter
was very much interested in philosophy and religion, and
Occidental College offered two scholarships for juniors
at the University of Hawaii and Lingnan University in
Canton, China. Walter applied for and was accepted for
the exchange scholarship to Hawaii.
Thus, he spent his junior year at the University of Hawaii,
studying Oriental religion, philosophy, and anthropology
through the exchange program. The greatest event of that
year was his meeting and studying with a great Quaker,
Thomas R. Kelly. Walter was Kelly’s only major student,
and under him, Walter studied ethics, Western philosophy,
as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Indian religion and
philosophy. Most of all he was impressed with Kelly’s
Quaker views in religion, especially the belief in Man
as a being who could go to God directly without intermediaries.
When he began to think about a graduate school, much pressure
was on Walter Kring to enter the Presbyterian ministry.
The Presbyterian seminaries at that time appeared to be
too conservative for him, so at the suggestion of Elton
Trueblood—another Quaker who was the chaplain at
Stanford University—who came to Occidental for a
religious emphasis week, he applied to the Harvard Divinity
School.
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| Adlai
Stevenson, presidential candidate, arrives at All
Souls during the 1956 presidential campaign. L-R Stevenson's
son, Eleanor Clark French, Mr. Stevenson, and Dr.
Kring. |
Walter
Kring went to Harvard Divinity School in the Fall of 1937.
His class consisted of only eight men. He was the first
person who was under the care of the rather conservative
Boston Presbytery ever to go to Harvard Divinity School.
He did some field work in a Congregational church in Belmont.
Then, at the beginning of his second year at the Divinity
School, Williard L. Sperry, the Dean of the Divinity School
and the Preacher to the University, asked Walter Kring
to assist them in the daily services at the college chapel:
meeting the preachers (often professors), going over the
order of service with them, and listening to all of them
preach. The next year, in addition to helping Dean Sperry,
he became the student assistant at the First Church in
Boston under Charles Edwards Park, who taught a preaching
class at the Divinity School. Walter Kring graduated in
the Divinity School Class of 1940.
Walter’s
mother was a great influence in encouraging him to return
to the Presbyterian fold. He candidated for a little Presbyterian
church in Hoosick Falls, New York, where he then accepted
a call. The ministry at Hoosick Falls was to be a short
one because that December the Japanese attacked Pearl
Harbor, and America was in World War II. It wasn’t
long before Walter Kring was practically the only young
man left in the town. He served as cub master, scout master,
and air scout master all at the same time. Although from
his Quaker teachers he had strong feelings against the
war, he volunteered for the Naval Chaplaincy. He went
to the Chaplain’s School in Williamsburg, Virginia
after bidding good-bye to his parish in Hoosick Falls.
 |
| An
orignal stianed glass work by Dr. Kring |
With
the Naval Chaplaincy program, Walter preached to large
congregations of approximately 1500 men. Chapel was compulsory,
and he enjoyed his work with the bright young sailors.
Walter asked for aircraft carrier duty for this first
assignment at sea, and soon received orders in January
1945 to report to the U.S.S. “Shamrock Bay.”
The ship left a week before Easter to engage in a 90 day
stint in the terrible battle of Okinawa. From the ship,
pilots flew direct support for the marines on the ground.
The crew saw many American ships that were damaged by
the kamikazes but, fortunately, the “Shamrock Bay”
was never hit.
While decommissioning in South Boston, Walter Kring again
made contacts with the First Church in Boston. He preached
several times at the Second Church, and they wanted to
extend a call to him. But the last time he preached there,
he discovered—to his surprise—that there was
a pulpit committee from the First Unitarian Church in
Worcester, Massachusetts. They wanted him to visit Worcester.
 |
| The
All Souls' School Playground on the Roof |
Walter
went out to Worcester and met the minister, Dr. Maxwell
Savage, who had just completed 27 years as the minister
of the church, building it into one of the largest in
the Unitarian denomination. Maxwell Savage was the son
of Minot Savage, a famous Unitarian minister, and a brother-in-law
of Minot Simons, for many years the minister of All Souls,
New York. In Kring’s opinion, the Worcester church
was too large and important for a person with his meager
experience. He never would have sought that church. To
his surprise, they sought him, a thirty-year-old Presbyterian,
to be their minister. He began his ministry in Worcester
in September, 1946.
It was a tremendous job for one so young. Kring should
have had more parish experience. Nonetheless, he and the
people got along well, and the only unhappy time that
he had with the Worcester congregation was when he told
them after nine years of ministry that he had been called
to All Souls Church in New York City and that he expected
to accept the call.
Walter Donald Kring became the eighth minister of the
Unitarian Church of All Souls on Sunday evening, November
20, 1955.
No account of Walter Kring’s ministry would be complete
without some mention of his work as a potter. Interest
in this hobby began at Harvard graduate school when he
took a course in “Chinese and Japanese Art”
from Langdon Warner, a distinguished Orientalist. He became
extremely interested in the sung period of Chinese history,
the celadon glazes (blues and greens) and the ox-blood
glazes (bright red) that adorn so many ceramic pieces
in museums.
 |
When
he went to his first parish in Hoosick Falls, he built
a primitive kiln in the back yard. After settling in Worcester
after the war, Mr. Kring built a high-temperature kiln
and conducted thousands of experiments to recreate such
Oriental glazes. A trip to Japan in 1953 had only whetted
his pleasure from these ceramics. He displayed many of
his pots in American museums while minister at the Worcester
church.
When he was called to New York, the chairman of the search
committee told Mr. Kring that he was concerned about his
hobby if he lived in New York City. Walter Kring thought
that the committee believed his hobby would interfere
with his more important church work. Quite the opposite,
the committee wanted him to continue his artistic work,
but felt that it might be difficult in the city. Dr. Kring
has continued with his hobby to this day, throwing many
pots on the wheel and entering many exhibitions and shows.
Largely due to a long summer vacation, Walter Kring was
able to continue his hobby all through his ministry at
All Souls.
Walter Kring’s ministry was to last 23 years, the
second longest minister in the history of All Souls.
Adapted from Safely Onward.
