Kistler, Alan L., 1920-2008

Alan Kistler was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1920. He graduated from high school in Pittsburgh, attended the University of Pittsburgh, and graduated from the University of Chicago with an M.S. degree in 1951. He joined the Hotel and Restaurant Employees' and Bartenders' International Union local in Pittsburgh and was a volunteer organizer in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh before serving as a master sergeant in the U.S. Army during World War II from 1942 to 1946. After the war, Kistler worked as a newspaperman, joined the American Newspaper Guild, and became unit chair of the Pittsburgh branch of the guild. He was elected recording secretary and chief steward of Pittsburgh Local Industrial Union 1657, Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), in 1949, and became a member of Local 1147, United Steelworkers of America, CIO, in 1952. In 1952, Kistler went to Washington, D.C., as an organizer and assistant to CIO executive vice president Allan Haywood. After the CIO merged with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1954, Kistler was assigned to the Department of Organization. There, he served as coordinator of the General Electric cooperative organizing program and coordinated organizing campaigns conducted by the brewery workers and school administrators. He was appointed assistant director of the AFL-CIO Department of Organization in 1962; after the department was reorganized and renamed the Department of Organization and Field Services in 1973, Kistler was named director in 1974. In 1975, he was elected president of the Human Resources Development Institute (HRDI). Kistler retired in 1986, but continued to be active in the labor movement. Throughout his career, Kistler was involved in community affairs and local government. He was a member of the Greenbelt, Maryland, city council from 1955 to 1959 and served as mayor of Greenbelt from 1959 to 1961. Kistler and his wife, Marie Frances Connolly, had three children. Alan Kistler died in 2008 at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland.