Thankful for path
Church shows appreciation for Traws

Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a series about area pastors and their families and the services — both spiritual and practical — they provide their respective extended church families.

By BRUCE SYMES
Register Reporter

The Rev. Steve and Sue Traw, with portraits of their children and their spouses.

The love shown by the Rev. Steve and Sue Traw’s church family since both have undergone health problems gladdens them that they decided to stay in Iola.
When they came here that summer of 1987 from Texas to lead the First Christian Church, the Traws were pleased to be nearer their roots — he’s a native of northern Coffey County; she’s from Nemaha County — but felt they were coming into uncharted territory, not knowing for certain how the community might welcome them.
“We agreed we’d give Iola three years,” the pastor said, “that there would be other places ahead if this didn’t work out.”
Twenty years later — and 41⁄2 years after he developed cancer of the spine and a year after Sue was diagnosed with a type of dementia — the Traws continue to be embraced by their town and church, a reflection of the love and dedication their family has given the past two decades.
“Our church has been very understanding, first with my health situation and then with Sue,” Traw said. “She does well most of the time but just doesn’t understand what’s going on a lot of the time. It’s hard for her, especially having to give up the teaching like she did, but we’re doing well.
“My cancer is in remission, and they say it probably will come back,” he added, “but I’m confident it will respond to fairly low-level treatment when that happens, and we’ll manage when that time comes.”
That faith and positive attitude has carried him not only through the rough recent years but also through more than a few careers, raising a family and answering a very personal, poignant call to serve God.
Through it all, Traw knows his priority and keeps his role as husband, father and grandfather clearly distinct from any other commitment.
“Whoever, wherever we are, our greatest ministry is our families,” he said. “I love serving the Lord and enjoy serving my church, but that’s always been my feeling.”

TRAW VERY WELL could have been a farmer, teacher or career serviceman today, and he was each of those things for a time. He grew up on the family farm in Coffey County and enjoyed turning the soil, sowing and harvesting and otherwise tending the land.
“I loved it, and I think I was good at it, but when John Redmond (Reservoir) came in it displaced a lot of farmers, including my dad,” he said. “I think God was preparing me for what lay ahead.”
He decided to become a teacher and went to Emporia State Teachers College, now Emporia State University, to study mathematics and science education. There he met Sue, who was pursuing a degree in elementary education and music.
They married and began their lives as teachers — Steve at Nemaha Valley High School in Seneca and Sue at a small grade school in her home county.
“I enjoyed teaching, and I had some opportunities to minister to kids when I was teaching,” he said. “When you’re a minister, they expect you to (pointing a finger) minister to them. As a teacher, I was able to influence some kids with some spiritual matters perhaps without them being intimidated or put off by a minister telling them what to do.”
After a year’s teaching, though, Traw said he realized there were more lucrative job paths he could take. He’d worked at Iowa Beef Processors, now Tyson, while at Emporia and the summer prior to teaching.
“I always knew in my mind that I wanted to raise a family, and how would I do that, I wondered, on my teacher’s salary, which didn’t seem like much at the time,” he said. “My prior income back at Iowa Beef in construction, which I really enjoyed, nearly matched both our teaching salaries. I made plans to begin my Air Force career. So Sue kept teaching. That was her passion; it was what she wanted to do, and she’s a terrific teacher.”
After a couple years at IBP, Traw went to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio in 1971 and completed a 12-week officers training program, then went to pilot school. Sue continued to teach for a year as her husband served his country.
“Because the Vietnam War was winding down at that time, there was a backlog of pilots as they began coming home,” Traw explained. “I was in Lubbock, Texas, at that time but decided to go to California for navigators school. I found I was very adept to navigating planes, I think because of my math training, and I had an advantage there.”
For the next seven years, Traw would be based at Forbes Field in Topeka, flying on C-130 airlifters, often over his old stomping grounds.

ACTUALLY, THE TIME at Forbes was interrupted by a one-year stint in Thailand where he also worked as navigator on AC-130 gunship aircraft and trained personnel for the Air Force. It was during that time that God’s plan for Traw to become a minister was revealed, he said.
“It was a great year, even though I had to leave Sue and our first-born (son Mike) behind,” he said, recalling an anecdote from his overseas duty. “For the second year of his life, little Mike thought my name was Westinghouse, because when he wanted to see his dad, they’d get out the slide projector and play it on the refrigerator.”
Sue was teaching again back home and she and her son lived with her parents.
“It was during that year that I had the call,” Traw said. “I knew I was to go into the ministry.
“Everything up until that time had happened for a reason: the farm and John Redmond; my teaching and that time with the kids at the school; the fact that the conflict in Southeast Asia was ending when I went into the military, which kept me out of the most peril. It was clear to me that God was preparing me for that time.
“I kept seeing all the facets come together,” he continued. “In books, I began to see teaching that I hadn’t seen before. I’m very thankful to one of the young men that was there with the Overseas Men’s Christian Center who talked to me and counseled me about what was going on in my life. It was a time that I was saturating myself with things spiritual, and I’m thankful for it.”
Outwardly, Traw also was exhibiting a change.
“When I’d buy souvenirs in Thailand and send them home, I was drawn more to the spiritual artwork they were selling and things that had a peaceful message to them. Sue had a family member who had a gift for intuition and saw a change in me even before she did. She told Sue, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if Steve some day entered the ministry.’ That was fine with Sue, who has always been very spiritual and had prayed as a teenager to one day be married to a minister.
“When I told her, she was OK with it. Probably, this was all her fault and she didn’t know it,” he laughed.

TRAW WAS BROUGHT home to Florida to continue training navigators, and his family joined him there. The couple had daughters Judi and Rebecca as he was completing his military service.
“One of the good decisions I made was to have all our children when I was in the military,” he said. “Our last one only cost us $12.”
Traw left the Air Force in 1977 as a captain to answer his call. He applied to seminaries and chose Dallas, in part because of contact he’d had with missionaries from the school while in the military. As a full-time student with a family of five, carpentry jobs and a part-time ministry, “I was snowed under,” he said. “But it was an exciting time for us, and I condensed five years of school into four and we left Dallas for west Texas.”
Traw served five years at a Christian Church in Post, from 1982 to 1987. Sue stayed at home with their young children, played piano and organ at the church and volunteered with Sunday school and children’s programs.
They came next to Iola — for the three-year trial at First Christian Church — with Mike, 15, Judi, 12, and Rebecca, 10, able to spend time with their grandparents in eastern Kansas.
“My feeling has always been that our first ministry is our family,” Traw said. “Sue and I had been able to be around our grandparents, and we wanted that for our kids, since they had only infrequent visits up to that point because we were away with my military service and our time in Texas.
“Sue began to work in music at Jefferson and McKinley elementary school, and we fell in love with the church,” Traw said. “For her, I think it was the music program, which really was as good as it was because of the late Madge Strickler. She had elevated the music at our church to a very high level. Sue loved and admired that and directed the music at our church after we lost Madge until Sue was no longer able.”
Sue also originated Kingdom Kids, the church’s program for kindergartners through sixth-graders, and taught classes until J.L. Martin assumed the responsibility after her diagnosis.
The Traw children participated in First Christian while here. Today, Mike and wife Tara and their children Kate, Beth, Jesse, Joseph and Benjamin are in southern Johnson County; Judi and Kelly Donaldson and children Tatum, Maddie, Claire and Jacob live in Topeka. Rebecca and Kyle Stephenson and children Abbie and Eli are in Iola.
“Our children have blessed Mrs. Traw and I with 11 grandchildren, and they are all involved in very different flavors of churches,” Traw said, “We’re very thankful that they’re active in their faiths.”
Family influence continues to serve the minister as he serves First Christian, he noted with a smile.
“Just recently, Rebecca was reminding me before Sunday service, ‘Dad, turn off your lapel microphone before we start singing.’ My contribution to our church’s music program is to call out the hymn page numbers.”