It was as if the Old Testament passage being read that day in Memorial Church had been picked with Robert Kinnally in mind. In it a boy named Samuel hears a voice calling him over and over again. Finally Samuel listens, and answers God's call.
Later in the mass, Kinnally, Stanford's dean of admission, stood before his fellow Catholics and told them that he planned to answer a call he first heard two decades ago and become a Catholic priest. He credited people around him for helping him to change careers midstream. "Others have been with me on the journey: my family and friends in New York, friends right here whose examples and words -- profound and simple -- gave me the courage to take a leap, open up, listen and say, 'yes -- yes, Lord!'" Kinnally told the congregation on January 16.
Kinnally, 39, was appointed dean of admission and financial aid in September 1997. He came to the Farm from New York's Sarah Lawrence College. By the time he leaves in July, he will have helped choose three classes from among some 55,000 high school seniors. That includes the Class of 2002, for which Stanford received an all-time high of 18,888 applicants. Jonathan Reider, a senior member of Kinnally's staff, says his boss was well suited for his job because "he's a very cerebral guy. When we talk about looking for students with a high level of intellectual vitality, he doesn't have to study and think about it. He knows what that means."
Kinnally's career change is really a return to his roots -- his first job, when he was 14, was playing the organ in a Catholic church. He considered the priesthood years ago, but says the time at Stanford helped him finally make a decision to act. "You get distracted and you don't listen well," Kinnally says. "I wasn't really listening [before]. I was hearing, but I wasn't really listening to what this was all about."
Kinnally will attend St. John Fisher Seminary in Stamford, Conn. He hopes eventually to serve as a parish priest in the Diocese of Bridgeport. "He has all of the right qualities," says Father Patrick LaBelle, Stanford's Catholic pastor. "He's a person of compassion, he's bright and witty, and very understanding and cooperative." Perhaps most important, Kinnally has learned to listen -- and hear the call.
