Celebrating not one but three milestones last month, Pastor Jean Vargo marked the special events with her immediate family and larger family — the congregation at Bethlehem Lutheran Church.
Sharing pastoral duties at the church with her husband, Jim, the senior pastor, Vargo marked 25 years since ordination, 26 years as a military chaplain and her 17th wedding anniversary in one fell swoop. She will retire from the military on January 2 and her decorations include a Bronze Star and a Meritorious Service Medal.
Moving to Traverse City and assuming their positions in September of 2005, the Vargos are are enjoying their new responsibilities in the dynamic Bethlehem Lutheran Church.
"We were looking for a move and the Bishops were the ones who decided where you go,” said Vargo. "We were, 'Where's Traverse City?'”
Leading a flock of 941 members, the couple and their two daughters, Vitalia, 13, and Felicity, 4, have quickly become part of their community. Coming from a rural posting in a small town in New York, Traverse City is a big place.
"What's exciting here are the opportunities that it affords us as a family and each of us as individuals,” said Vargo, an Ohio native who grew up in California. "There are certain kinds of ministry that we can do here we can't do anywhere else.”
A pioneer in both ministry and the military, Colonel Vargo blazed a trail as a female chaplain. This was after she broke a glass ceiling in a Lutheran Seminary in Minnesota, where she turned after completing a food science degree at Whittier College in California. Aspiring to a career in outdoor education but realizing that was difficult to break into, she turned to a seminary in 1977.
"The pastor there said, 'That's a men's field.'” Vargo recalled. "But I said I was going in for youth ministry so they allowed me into the program.”
That program closed and Vargo then pursued her Master's of Divinity degree, completing it and being ordained in 1981.
Serving on active duty for three years and in the reserves for 23, Vargo has a huge respect for citizen soldiers who make deep personal sacrifices in their lives, families and careers to train and deploy.
Being deployed is a whole new ballgame, something citizen soldiers prepare and train for. For chaplains who are there to help everyone, the change in their circumstances while helping others adjust can be profoundly challenging.
"The ministry is intense in that your base is usually operating 24 hours a day and you're having to meet the needs,” said Vargo, who also served with the Air Force in Saudi Arabia during Desert Storm. "You do a lot of counseling and Bible study, many of these kids are away from home for the first time.”
"People are eager to be involved in the ministry,” Vargo added. "When we have a Christmas service on bases, everybody comes. There's a whole different flavor to it.”
During her career, Vargo has also held a range of positions in the Navy Reserves, New York Air National Guard and New York National Guard.
Vargo was the first and only female to become one of six Air National Guard Assistants to Air Education Training Command, an Air Force Command that has six chaplain colonels across the country. She also served as joint forces Headquarters chaplain to the New York Air National Guard and National Guard and state chaplain for the New York Air National Guard, the latter position overseeing all chaplains in the state.
Closing one chapter of her life with the New Year, Vargo is ready for the change but sad to see that ministry end.
"It's bittersweet to retire,” said Vargo. "I've been on the road for eons. Now I have no place to travel to.”
Working half-time and concentrating on internal programs at the Bethlehem Lutheran Church, such as Christian education and youth worship and music, Vargo enjoys sharing duties with her husband. While both have been in ministry since they met in Italy, where he was a Navy chaplain, this is their first time actively serving together. For years they struggled to balance his civilian ministry and her military chaplain postings but with Vargo's retirement that is behind them.
"We work very well together,” she said. "It's helpful to be in the same profession and helpful in that we can share responsibilities. If Jim can't make something I can step in or vice versa. "