2009 All-Time Great Player - Al Kuhn

Al Kuhn
2009 All-Time Great Player

Al Kuhn played in 13 consecutive USVBA Open National Tournaments from 1950 to 1962. He was 16 years old in 1950 and retired at age 28. Each year he played on a Chicago YMCA team. The first two years, he played for the Wilson Ave. YMCA. In 1952, he joined the outstanding North Ave. YMCA team which had won National Championships in the 1940's.

Kuhn was selected as a member of the All American Team six different times - once the third team, three times on the second team, and in 1954 and 1955 he was first team All American. His team never finished higher than third in the National Tournament, which was dominated by teams from California. In 1958, his team won the National AAU Championship held in Minneapolis, which coincidentally was the site of Kuhn's first out of town tournament hosted by the Minneapolis YMCA in 1949, sixty years ago.

Kuhn and three teammates joined a group of USA All Stars who toured Europe in the summer of 1953, coached by Harry Wilson. They won 16 out of 17 matches, losing 3-2 only to the Yugoslavian national team before 40,000 fans in an outdoor stadium in Belgrad.

Kuhn was selected to participate in the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City. He and Sid Nachlas of Houston were the only two non-Californians on the men's gold medal team. That was the first time volleyball was included in the Pan American Games.

Kuhn was a product of the Chicago Public School system. After three years of Cub Scouts, he joined Boy Scouts at age 12 and became an Eagle Scout at age 14. The next year he and two other Eagle Scouts were invited by the senior patrol leader, Howie Gould, to learn how to play volleyball. With Howie's dad as a teacher, they began weekly sessions an hour before the Wilson Ave. YMCA Team would practice. Kuhn stayed with it while his buddies dropped out after a couple of months.

Sports have always been a big part of Kuhn's life. He joined the SENN High School swimming team as a backstroker in his junior year. As a senior, after growing 8 inches, he changed from setter to spiker in volleyball, joined the High school football team as an end and played center on the high school basketball team.

Kuhn's freshman year at Northwestern University, he became a walk-on member of the swimming team. He was selected as a member of the NCAA All American Swimming Team each of his four years of competition. Kuhn culminated his career by winning the NCAA 100-yard free style gold metal in March 1956 at Yale University. It was almost one year to the day after winning the volleyball gold medal in Mexico City. He received the Western Conference Merit Award (now called the Big Ten Medal) as the outstanding graduating scholar/athlete at NU in 1956.

Public service and volunteerism have always been an important aspect of Kuhn's life. After receiving a bachelor of science degree in civic engineering from NU in 1956, he attended graduate school in transportation engineering at NU, became a member of the faculty as a teaching assistant and taught a sophomore-level course on engineering mechanics. He applied for and was chosen to be a visiting lecturer at the University of Khatoum, in Sudan Africa for the 1957-58 school year.

Before leaving for Africa, Kuhn attended a National Red Cross Aquatic School as a volunteer instructor. He met a young first aid student named Cathy Cowie from Traverse City, Mich. After school he visited Traverse City briefly to meet Cathy's family and then left for Africa. A long distance letter campaign resulted in Cathy and Al being the first couple married in the new Traverse City Presbyterian Church in June 1958.

During the first year they lived in a small apartment in Chicago, started a family and both found jobs. Kuhn was a first aid and water safety field representative for the Chicago Area Red Cross Charter. He would attend classes at the University Of Chicago Graduate School Of Economics as an Earhart Fellow in the morning, and he would work for the Red Cross in the afternoon and evening. His first son, Al Junior, was born in July 1959 and in October they moved to Peoria where he became director of safety services and the Blood Program for the local Red Cross Charter.

Kuhn played volleyball at the YMCA at noon, was a volunteer coach for the YMCA swimming team and went to volleyball tournaments on weekends. In November 1960, he became executive director of the Hammond Indiana Red Cross Charter, and stayed a Hoosier until retiring to Traverse City in 2004.