DOREEN’S LUCK

By ANDREW MCGINN

a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Between the open books on her desk and the punctured archery targets on the floor, Kim Nofel’s office at First Presbyterian Church looks pretty much like you’d expect a pastor’s office to look.

Well, assuming the pastor has a professional archer for a son.

Nofel’s son, Matthew, spent the recent New Year’s holiday shooting arrows in the Fellowship Hall of his mom’s new church.

Nofel, who arrived in Jefferson last month to take charge of Greater Greene County Presbyterian Ministries, expressed gratitude to the church property committee for allowing her son to maintain a practice schedule.

“The first question,” Nofel said, “was, ‘What if he misses?’”

“At this point, if he misses ...” Nofel added, not bothering to finish the thought, the crinkling of her eyes from behind her face mask giving away the grin.

Matt Nofel is one of the top-ranked men’s archers in the country, a member of the U.S. Archery Team and in competition to represent the nation at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

He wasn’t going to miss.

With his target propped up by two folding chairs, Matt Nofel let fly arrow after arrow in the church Fellowship Hall — each one zipping past the upright piano — which could become something of a unique claim to fame for the members of First Presbyterian if he makes the Olympics.

Of course, Jefferson already has one claim to Olympic archery fame — her life-sized bronze statue at the corner of Lincoln Way and Vine Street is forever aiming at a bronze target on the opposite corner.

It wasn’t bronze, however, that Doreen Wilber won at the 1972 games in Munich, Germany. Taking aim from behind her cat glasses, the 42-year-old “Jefferson housewife” outshot the world’s best to claim the gold.

The Rev. Kim Nofel could hardly believe it when she visited Jefferson for the first time in November. Of all the towns in need of a full-time pastor, what are the odds that it would be the one with the statue of an Olympic gold medal archer in it?

Nofel, a Level 3 USA Archery coach herself, promptly, as she puts it, “geeked out over Doreen.”

The significance wasn’t lost on son Matt, either. During his recent visit to Jefferson over the holidays from the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic training site in Chula Vista, Calif., the 21-year-old Olympic hopeful paid the statue a visit clad in his Team USA jersey. Taking up position beside her, he drew his recurve bow in symbolic unity.

“An inspiring way for me to start the year,” he wrote on Instagram to his 7,243 followers.

The U.S. will send only a trio of male archers to Tokyo in July, Kim Nofel explained, and her son is holding third place comfortably. With 16 archers vying for three spots, Matt Nofel is only a point and a half behind the archer ranked second.

“But,” his mom cautioned, “there are lots of points to be had coming up.”

The team will be finalized in May.

The athletes on display this summer in Tokyo could arguably be among the greatest of all time — not only because of their athleticism, but because they were able to keep their focus during one of the most turbulent years in recent global history.

“Archery is 90 percent mental,” Kim Nofel explained, “and the other 10 percent is mental. At that level, everybody’s got great coaching. Everybody’s got great equipment. What’s left?”

Focus, Nofel said, is everything.

“In March, he said he was shooting the best he’s ever shot,” she said, describing how the pandemic halted everything from training to competition.

Even the Olympic Games themselves were postponed for the first time in history. Tokyo 2020 was forced to become Tokyo TBA.

But, frankly, the pandemic has knocked everyone off their game.

It would be a challenging enough time to assume the leadership of one new church — let alone three new churches.

Greater Greene County Presbyterian Ministries is comprised of three different Presbyterian congregations in Jefferson, Grand Junction and Paton.

Because most meetings are being held on Zoom, Nofel has yet to meet all of the congregants. There was no in-person Christmas Eve worship, either, for possibly the first time in history. And because of health precautions, she has even been prevented from visiting senior living facilities, a favorite pastime.

Nevertheless, Nofel felt called here.

It’s been an unsettling time for Presbyterians in Greene County. Within just the past several years, the three churches merged, lost their pastor to retirement and then lost their new pastor shortly after his arrival for health reasons, leaving Wendy Pittman, a lifelong Greene County resident and a commissioned pastor, to hold it together.

“She’s done a marvelous job leading the congregation during all of this,” Nofel said. “I’m blessed to have a co-pastor as efficient and talented as she is.”

Nofel’s husband, Steve, is currently pastor of Presbyterian churches in Algona and Irvington.

“This popped up and hit my heart,” Nofel said of the opening for a pastor in Greene County. “Hopefully I can bring some stability to their situation.”

The Nofels, who both consider themselves small-church pastors, have been separated before in their work. But always before, the distance between them was measured by the number of mountain passes.

Kim Nofel considers Colorado home.

It’s where her family eventually settled following her dad’s career in the Air Force as a fighter pilot. In retirement, Al Ruth, her father, went straight from the cockpit of an F-105 Thunderchief to the seminary, eventually retiring for good as a Presbyterian minister in 2000.

“God is funny,” Nofel said.

Nofel found out just how funny when she entered the seminary.

“I never thought in a million years I’d follow in either of his footsteps,” Nofel said of her dad.

If Matt Nofel can trace his laser-like focus as an archer to anyone in the family, it might be Al Ruth.

In the spring of 1970, Kim Nofel was in second grade when her dad was forced to punch out of his crippled fighter jet over Vietnam. He was just two weeks from coming home.

The family still has the parachute.

Later, when Ruth entered the ministry, his cool head became legendary. After one particularly tense church meeting that almost came to blows, Ruth was asked how he could stay so calm.

“He said, ‘I’ve been shot at with real bullets,’” Nofel recalled.

As Ruth was flying sorties over Southeast Asia, Doreen Wilber was hitting her targets as well.

A 1948 graduate of Jefferson High School, Wilber’s entry into competitive archery is no less legendary. It began innocently enough in 1957, when a customer of her mechanic husband, Paul “Skeeter” Wilber, paid for a car repair with a bow and arrows.

To the end, Skeeter would be her only coach.

Doreen Wilber, who died in 2008, worked before as a bookkeeper, made drapes, and baked cookies and pie — and ended up as one of Sports Illustrated’s Athletes of the Century.

The 1972 Munich Games — which was marked by the highest of highs (swimmer Mark Spitz’s seven gold medals) and the lowest of lows (the murders of 11 Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists) — heralded the return of archery to the Olympics after an absence of 52 years.

Today, Nofel said, there is a photo of Wilber on display at her son’s training facility near San Diego.

The Nofels, it would seem, were about as equally prepared to enter the world of archery as Doreen Wilber. In fact, the Christmas that 8-year-old Matt asked for a bow, his parents did what any other parents would do.

“We got him the little plastic Walmart one with suction cups,” Kim Nofel said with a laugh.

“The next year, he asked for a real one,” she added.

Now the only question seems to be whether spectators will be admitted to watch the games in Tokyo when they get underway July 23.

It’s unclear whether the pandemic will be enough under control.

Kim Nofel doesn’t even want to think about it, giving an answer after a moment of silence that might not be the most pastor-like — but one that hits the bull’s-eye.

“It would suck to not get to go,” she said.