Kalloch Family Webmaster

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Welcome to my autobiographical page, I'm Ken Kalloch, webmaster of this site, and two other family sites The Killough Reunion Association Home Page and My Irish Roots (a site for a cousin of mine).  I'm also co-historian of the Kalloch Reunion Association, along with Peter Richardson, and one of four assistant historians of the Killough Reunion Association.

This page is divided into five sections which cover some of my experiences and interests so far in my life.  The sections are: 1) My family, work, etc., 2) Family history & genealogy, 3) Computers 4) Religion & Argentina, 5) Lakota (Sioux) culture & spirituality.
 

My Family, work, etc.

I'm 50 years old and single.  I was married, but we divorced in 1999.  We had four children and I've dedicated this website to them.  It's my hope that this website can help all of us and our children to learn more about our heritage and our connections as a family. 

I grew up and still live in Concord, NH.  After graduating from Concord High in 1978, I went to work in the composing room of Rumford Press, where my parents had both worked since the 1940's.  I thought that printing would be a good career, but after 4 years of working there I was laid off and the plant closed in 1983.  At the time that I went to work there, they were printing more than sixty different magazines.  The largest was Consumer Reports with about 2 million issues per month.  They also printed Atlantic Monthly and many magazines for McGraw Hill, Hearst, and other large publishers.  Both of my parents went to work at Rumford Press after graduating from High School.   In 1942, my mother, Catherine was one of only a few women hired to operate the Monotype caster, due to the lack of men because of WWII.  My parents brought me in there frequently as I grew up.  I remember when I was young seeing my father operating a monotype caster.  Then in the early 1970's I remember seeing the transformation to computer typesetting, and when I went to work there I saw further transformations in typesetting, which also led to the demise of the composing room.  Typesetting went from a very skilled  profession which required 4 years of apprenticeship, a large composing room and many workers, to something where publishers could set up their own typesetting in their own office with less people with less experience and less cost.  Now any one of us we can do virtually the same thing on our own home computers.  As Rumford started phasing out their composing room, I went to work in the bindery for about a year, and then was laid off in December 1982 as the plant continued moving closer to permanent closure.  During the time prior to lay off, I volunteered to be a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and I ended up serving an 18 month mission to Argentina in the "Argentina Rosario Mission" from May 1983 to Nov. 1984.

After I came home from Argentina, I went to work at the New Hampshire State Hospital in the kitchen, (a woman that I had worked with at Rumford Press now worked in the kitchen and told me that they were hiring).  I worked there for 2 years and met my first wife (wedding photo), Marjorie (her portrait pedigree).  Unfortunately our marriage ended in divorce.  In 1987 I switched jobs at the State Hospital and worked until 1997 as a Nursing Assistant.  After a decade of taking care of psychiatric patients, I decided that I wanted to go back into printing and graphic arts, since I had previously enjoyed that type of work.  So in 1997 I quit work at NHH and went to work at a printing company called Concord Litho.  I worked in the sheet-fed press department first as a helper, then as a feeder (load the pallets of paper into the end of the press).  In the Fall of 2000 I had to stop work there because of an illness called sarcoidosis.

Family History and Genealogy

One of my main interest/pastimes is helping our Killough/Kalloch family to connect with each other, and with our history and genealogy via this website.

This is how I connect with the Kalloch & Killough family tree:  My father was David H. Kalloch, son of Sumner Boyd Kalloch, who grew up at Wiley's Corner in St. George, Maine.  Sumner was a son of Adam Boyd Kalloch, who was a son of Capt. Adam Kelloch, son of Hanse Kelloch, who was a son of Matthew, son of Finley (Killough) Kelloch, who came from Northern Ireland to Boston, Mass. when he was 7 years old in 1718 and settled in St. Georges, Maine in 1735.  My Kalloch line from Robert & Mary Killough to me in register book format.  Here are a couple pages with photos of myself and family: My "Portrait Pedigree",  My Photo Album page.

When I was pretty young, I remember going with my mother and grandmother Mabel many times to visit old cemeteries to look at old stones for genealogical information.  My grandmother enjoyed history and genealogy and did a lot of good research which helped me get started with my research.  One day she let me photocopy all her research, this got me started and I expanded from there.

Serendipity has also helped.  The most prominent case of serendipity that I've experienced was on January 13th of 1983 when I was at the old record's room of N.H. Vital records trying to research my mother's Messer family.  I had gotten back to her grandfather or great-grandfather, but that was only as far back as I had been able to get to.  I wrote "Messer " on a piece of paper and was going to hand it to one of the research volunteers in charge of the old records, so that they could retrieve the Messer records for me.  But then a guy whom I had never met, who was also there doing research, saw "Messer" on my piece of paper and introduced himself as Tracy Messer.  I showed Tracy the information that I had so far for this line and he immediately recognized the names that I had.  It turned out that his great-great-grandfather Hollis Messer was a brother to my great-great-grandfather Curtis Messer.  The best part of our meeting was that Tracy had traced this line and related lines extensively back to the 1600's and I was able to photo-copy his Family group sheets and Pedigree charts!!! 

Most of the research that I did on my genealogy, was in the 1980's, mostly at the Tuck Library of New Hampshire Historical Society.  I made a lot of progress, but I haven't done very much work on it since then and there's still a lot more work to do.  My genealogical priority now is to help my Kalloch and Killough cousins to connect with our family tree and to verify that their information in the genealogy is correct and up-to-date, also to help our family members to learn more about our family history via this website and killough.org.

Computers

I've liked computers since I first saw one in high school, and I think my computing experiences when I was younger contributed to me ending up as webmaster of this site.  I'm happy for how computers have evolved since the late 1970's, but I still have a lot of nostalgia for those earlier days of computing.

The first computer that I used was in 1976 at Concord High.  The school had a Digital PDP-8e running BASIC, with two model ASR-33 -(nice photo, site is in German though) Teletype keyboards connected which printed everything out onto paper instead of a monitor, and programs were saved on punched paper tape.  In my junior year, 1977 (Photo - I'm in the right photo in the back), I got very interested in it.  I thought that it was the coolest thing, and I spent all my free periods using it and stayed after school many days to use it.  That year I received an award from the school for "computer science".  This was the first year that the school held Achievement Awards night (according to the school history Timeline on their website), so I probably received the first computer science award that the school gave out!  Another thing at this time was the printing company (Rumford Press) that my parents both worked at (and which I later went to work at) printed all the books for DEC's computers (PDP-8's, PDP-11's, etc.) and also printed BYTE and Creative Computing magazine, so the occasional copy of these magazines/books that my father brought home also helped fuel my interest in computers.  I thought about a career with computers and took some classes at NHTI during the summer and fall after graduation, but mainly for financial reasons, I decided to go to work at Rumford Press where my parents worked.

The first computer that I wanted was either an Altair or IMSAI, but I didn't buy a computer until 1982 (a TRS-80).  I tried it out for a while, but ended up taking it back and I used the money for my trip to Utah in 1982.  I didn't buy another computer until the Spring of 1992 when I bought a Tandy 1000-RL.  The 1000-RL rekindled my interest in computers and I wanted to learn as much as I could, and by December 1992 I wanted a better computer so that I could learn more.  The one that caught my attention was the Tandy Sensation (this was the first personal computer based on the MPC  (Multimedia PC) format), and I ended up getting it (with the help of my mother, nice x-mas present!).  The Sensation came with a modem which allowed me to call online services such as Prodigy and America On Line, so within a short time I had downloaded a lot of free/shareware software, games, etc.

The next significant event that happened was a girl who I worked with told me that I should meet her boyfriend, because he was also very interested in computers.  This other guy lived on the other side of the city and we would drive back and forth to each other's apartments to swap the newest software files that we had downloaded.  I had the idea that maybe there might be an easier way to share files, perhaps some type of software that would allow us to call each others computers to exchange files, instead of needing to drive back and forth.  So I found BBS software that was available for download on AOL.  I tried several of them, but the BBS software that I liked the best was called Spitfire, it worked very well and allowed us to share files over the phone line.  I also found a BBS list of other BBS's in the area and started calling them. 

In April 1993, I decided to get a separate phone line for the BBS and make my BBS available to the public as the "Starlite BBS."  (One of the first BBSs that I called, because it was running Spitfire was the "Up All Nite BBS", I think maybe located in Chicago.  The spelling of "Nite" was part of my inspiration for my spelling of "Starlite," the other was, I was standing outside one evening looking at the stars, trying to think up a name for it.).  This allowed people to call my home computer using a modem.  A year later in April of 1994 our local newspaper did an article about mine and a couple other BBS's.  I ended up shutting down the BBS in 1998 (after 5 years of running 24/7), and because my main interest changed to learning as much as I could about the Lakota and their language, I didn't do very much with computers until July 2001, when I started this website.  A very positive outcome of of my interest in computers and the BBS, was that it led me to finding the Lakota for which I'm very happy.  I wrote some more about the BBS in that section and how I was introduced to the Lakota by it.  Another positive outcome of my earlier computer interest, is that it probably made it easier for me to learn what I needed, to build this website and make our history and genealogy available online.

Religion and Mission to Argentina

Religion and spirituality is something that has had a major influence on my life, with my mission to Argentina and eventually with my interest in Native American, Lakota spirituality.  I love both the Argentine and Lakota cultures and the Spanish and Lakota languages.

My religious/spiritual journey began when I attended Sunday school (I guess that it actually began before that, when I was baptized as a baby there, but I don't remember that event) at a Congregational church (the same church where my parents were married).  I think that I even had close to perfect attendance every year of Sunday school.  I'm glad that my parents encouraged me to do this, but by the time I was in High school I was looking for something else.  At this time when I was in the 10th grade I dated an LDS (Mormon) girl and we attended many youth activities together and I ended up joining the church, but I only stayed active for about 6 months.  Then I read about other spiritual paths and religions, but didn't find one that I was comfortable with, and I stayed inactive from the LDS church until January 1982, when I became active again.  This time I stayed active and by June I was thinking about serving as a missionary for the church.  That summer I drove to Utah with a friend and we stopped at many of the church historic sites in New York, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri, and I spent the entire month of August with a family that lived near Salt Lake City in West Jordan.

I don't remember when I actually applied to be a missionary, but my mission call came the following March to Argentina (National Anthem) (map of South America).  I was called to serve in the "Argentina Rosario Mission," in the northeastern part of the country (see the map on my Mission Photos page).  (In 1990 the mission area was divided, with the northern part becoming the Argentina Resistencia Mission).  (Argentina info page from LonelyPlanet.com).  On May 5th, 1983, I entered the Missionary Training Center (MTC) for 8 weeks of study.  There were 8 of us in our MTC district, called the "Galvez District."  The 5 other Elders also went to Argentina Rosario, the 2 sisters went to Chile or Bolivia (I don't remember exactly).  The eight of us spent all our our class time together, which was about 9 hours per day.  Long days, but we learned a real lot very quickly!  I had a difficult time memorizing the "Missionary Discussions," but while I was in Argentina, I managed to learn Spanish/Castellano pretty well.

At the time that I volunteered to be a missionary, I felt strongly that it was the right thing to do, and I'm glad that I was able to do it, because I was able to experience another culture and learn another language.  I arrived in Buenos Aires, Argentina on July 8th 1983,  (this was just one year after the Falklands/Malvinas war, and the military still ruled the country).  After arriving in B. A., we rode to another airport, then took a flight to the city of Rosario.  My first mission area was in Rosario (3rd ward, Saladillo), then my next area was in downtown Rosario (7th ward, Parque Independencia).  On the evening of Oct. 30th, it was quite a sight to watch from our 2nd floor apartment, the streets and sidewalks below fill with multitudes of jubilant Argentines after elections were held (¿Luder o Alfonsín?) and Raul Alfonsín won.  (The era of the Argentina's military dictatorship was coming to an end!).  On Oct. 31st, I left Rosario (province of Santa Fe), and traveled to La Paz (prov. of Entre Ríos).  Then I journeyed up north to Misiones province to Apóstoles & Posadas (2nd branch).  (Apóstoles & Posadas are now part of the Argentina Resistencia mission, instead of the Argentina Rosario mission).  After about 7 months in Misiones, I then went back to Santa Fe province, this time to the city of Santa Fe, (Pompeya branch), and finally to the city of Rafaela.  On Nov. 6, '84, fifteen of us (the other 5 Elders that I started with, plus 7 others from the U.S. & 2 Argentines) who served missions from July '83 to Nov. '84, gathered at the mission house.  I received an honorable release from my mission, and arrived back home on Nov. 8, 1984.  Serving on this mission was one of the best experiences of my life, although it was very difficult at times. (See: My Mission Photos Page).

I still try to keep up with the Spanish language (Castellano), even though it has now been 25+ years since I lived in Argentina, and I still enjoy drinking yerba maté (bombilla), the national drink of Argentina and Paraguay.  I also still have a real fondness for Argentine tango music and "Rock Argentino" (my favorite band is Los Enanitos Verdes), dulce de leche, empanadas, and many things Argentine.  But, I don't have the same fondness for the church and I'm no longer a member.  I still think that there are some good things about the church, but there are too many things in its doctrine (and Book of Mormon) that are no longer logical to me and which I can no longer accept.  I kept going for about 4 years after my mission, but ended up deciding that I needed to go on a different path.  It was difficult for me to get past Mormonism (recovery from Mormonism site).  Leaving Mormonism and Christianity created a big spiritual void which was difficult to fill with any other religion/spirituality.  I looked at other spiritual paths in the late 1980's, but by the the early 1990's I totally gave up trying to find a religion or spirituality that I felt comfortable with.

Lakota Culture and Spirituality

Another interest that I have is learning more about the Lakota (Sioux) language, culture, and history.  I love the Lakota language, culture, and people (oyate) very much - Lakĥol Wicoĥ'an kiŋ lila waštewalake yelo!

My introduction to the Lakota happened in September 1994 when a person called my BBS (newspaper article about my BBS) who said that he had an interest in Plains Indian culture, "partially the Lakota/Sioux".  This was the first time that I had seen Lakota & Sioux written together.  I didn't know that they were two names for the same people and I knew close to nothing about them, so I looked up "Lakota" to in the World Book encyclopedia that was in the bookcase behind where I was sitting.  It didn't have an article under "Lakota", so I looked up "Sioux", but that didn't have very much information, other than they were located in South Dakota.  So then I looked at a National Geographic map of South Dakota and I saw where the Reservations (pdf map) were located.  Afterwards I looked for more information on the computer BBS networks that I had access to (this was prior to Internet web access), and I found a series of Dakota/Lakota language messages: "ieska wowapi dakota" on "Native Network" (an "echo-mail" network similar to FidoNet which was available on BBS systems) that really interested me. 

This person who called my BBS had taken a Lakota Philosophy course at Sinte Gleska University with Albert White Hat (link to Albert's Lakota language book), and a short time after first meeting him on the BBS he gave me a bookstore list for Sinte Gleska University (on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota), and I ordered some Lakota language books.  He also loaned me some cultural/history books by Luther Standing Bear, Black Elk and James R. Walker.  I studied the Lakota language and history, but stayed away from the spirituality, because I read on the computer about problems with non-natives getting involved with the spirituality, and with "plastic medicine men" selling Native American spirituality.  After reading about this, I felt it wasn't the right time for me to get involved with the spirituality, and the respectful thing to do was to leave it alone.

In March of 1995, 7 months after beginning my Lakota studies, I was curious to hear what the ceremonial songs sounded like, so I ordered a cassette and book of Lakota Ceremonial Songs, by John Around Him, from Sinte Gleska University.  My order came and within a week after it came, I saw a newspaper notice that John Around Him was coming to New Hampshire to do a workshop not far from my home.  I looked at the name in the paper and said to myself, geez, isn't that the same name as the guy on the tape and book?  I checked and it was!  John conducted a two-day workshop at local Indian Museum in April 1995 and I was able to attend.  He spoke about the traditional Lakota culture, history and values, and he stressed the importance of the Lakota language ("language comes first, language is everything, without the language we have no culture").  He also cautioned people to be careful with trying to learn the spirituality from books, saying that they can/will confuse you, and can be dangerous.  He also warned us about people from the reservation going around lying to people and that religion isn't to be sold.  He said that we've got to be careful with what we're doing in a spiritual way, to ask questions and get enough information.

During John's presentation, he also told us about his life and the problems that he had after returning from the Vietnam war with drugs and alcohol and he told us how he was able to give up those things and become a cultural and spiritual leader in his community.  After each day of workshop John conducted a Lakota purification ceremony (inipi) at another location (Proctor Academy, in Andover, NH).  This was the first time that I participated in this ceremony and my first experience with Lakota spirituality.  Prior to meeting John, I was drinking pretty heavily and it didn't seem that I could go without it.  While we were standing around waiting for the stones to heat for the purification ceremony, I was talking with John about drinking.  I told him that I really didn't drink that much, and John said to me "you don't need it."  These four words stuck in my head and that night after my first inipi was the first night in a long time that I didn't drink.  The next day of the workshop John talked about the cannupa (sacred pipe) and how it needed to be respected and that you shouldn't have alcohol around it.  I decided at that point that if I was going to pick up the cannupa and follow this path of spirituality, then I would stop drinking permanently.  Now almost 15 years later, I still pick up the cannupa to pray and I have not picked up any alcohol.  I am very grateful to Wakan Tanka (God) for this, I don't think this would be possible without his help, and I'm very grateful to John for coming to New Hampshire and sharing his Lakota culture and spirituality, I'm also thankful for John inviting me and my family to his family's Sun Dance ceremony the following year.

The following year after meeting John my youngest son was born and I named him "John" after John Around Him.  When my son John (photos) was 2 months old he traveled with us to John Around Him's Sun Dance ceremony between Kyle and Allen, SD (on the Pine Ridge reservation), (my other children stayed in NH).  The following year our entire family was able to travel to South Dakota (click to view a picture of our family at Mt. Rushmore in South Dakota in 1997).  (A Lakota perspective of Mt. Rushmore and the Black Hills of South Dakota).  On this trip, John, now one year old, stood up and walked for the first time at the house of the family that we stayed with at Potato Creek on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

When I started on this path in September 1994, someone said to me, "to learn the customs and ceremonies of a people" was "an honor", and  that a person should "stay with one nation of people so that honor can be returned," also they told me that it was not right to mix and match customs from many nation's traditions, because each native nation has it's own distinct traditions and ceremonies.  I'm very grateful for these words of advice, because over the years I've followed this advice, and honor has returned to me in many ways.  One way that I've been honored is with an naming/adoption (hunka) ceremony, held at a sundance in 2001.

Following are some links about the importance not mixing Native traditions from one culture with another culture, or selling spirituality.  First is the Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality, which was unanimously passed in 1993 by about 500 representatives from 40 different tribes and bands of the Lakota, and the second is an Article On The "Lakota Declaration of War".  These pages also have some good information: "Cultural Theft," and "What is a Twinkie."  There's also a three part video called White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men which I recommend watching, and good to read is the statement by Chief Arvol Looking Horse which he made following the Sedona "sweat lodge" deaths in Oct. '09.  In the statement, Arvol mentions a documentary film called Spirits for Sale (trailer).

Anyone studying the Lakota language, or who would like to hear what the Lakota language sounds like, might like to visit my KILI Radio Lakota Language Recordings page where there are mp3 audio recordings for two Lakota language shows which are broadcast weekly on KILI radio.

http://www.facebook.com/ken.kalloch

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