Rev. Kathleen Crighton started coming to First when she was five years old, after her family moved to a home a block away on Jefferson Avenue. She was confirmed in the church at the age of twelve. Years later she was ordained as a ruling elder and served on the session during the pastorates of Revs. Ed Gouedy and Will Mackintosh. Her first career as a business and financial journalist took her to Atlanta, where she lived for fifteen years and was active in two Presbyterian churches. In the 1990s, she took courses for laypersons at Columbia Theological Seminary near Atlanta and realized God had been calling her to seminary for a long time. She enrolled at Columbia in 1996, thinking she would write spiritual books like the author Madeleine L’Engle. In the summer of 1998, she did a congregational internship at First under the supervision of Rev. Cliff Nunn and realized her call was to parish ministry. Ordained on the first Sunday of 2001, she served three congregations and was active in the Presbytery of South Louisiana. She retired at the end of 2013 and has preached regularly in several churches in the New Orleans area. She is delighted to serve at First, her spiritual home, and looks forward to the journey ahead.
Kathy married Rich Tatum, her high school boyfriend, at First in 2010. They are a blended family, being owned by four cats and a dog. Rich is a retired computer geek. He is currently a student in information technology, with a specialization in programming and analysis, at Delgado Community College.
Kathy published her first novel in 2019, The New Normal, a story of life in New Orleans immediately after Katrina. She’s also a certified Louisiana Master Gardener and an occasional knitter. And she has never outgrown her childhood passion for horses – she rides intro dressage at a farm in Folsom.
