Peter Orazem's Faith Story

As World War II was winding down in Europe, the situation in Slovenia, a republic of Yugoslavia, began to deteriorate. By the agreement at Yalta, the country had been left for the Soviets to occupy. Slava Furlan was a 16-year-old peasant girl boarding at a convent in Ljubljana so that she could attend high school. When her school closed, she was sent back home, but circumstances forced her to join a group of refugees heading north to Austria.

The group was composed of people fearing for their safety under communist rule, as the communists had been undertaking a series of assassinations of potential rivals, including prominent families and clergy. Frank Orazem was one of the group, the son of a peasant farmer who was marked because he was a known opponent of communism.

Both spent the next four years in refugee camps. Slava finished high school in the camp in a school set up by priests and teachers who were members of the refugee group. Frank served as altar boy at a local monastery and then pilfered apples from the church orchard on the way home. The Lord will provide.

As it became clear that the refugees could not be returned to Slovenia, the UN began a program of placing refugees in various countries, especially Argentina, Australia, Canada and the United States. Frank went to the U.S., where he soon was drafted into the U.S. Army. Slava went to Salina, Kan., where she served as a nanny for a large Catholic family and attended Marymount College.

Frank served as the altar boy for the chaplain at Fort Carson, Colo. The day before he was to be shipped to Korea, the chaplain went to the base commander to say Frank was too valuable -- he spoke six languages. Latin was one of them. English was not. Nevertheless, Frank was placed in military intelligence and sent to Fort Riley, Kan., where he was trained to interrogate any prisoners that might show up from the Holy Roman Empire. There was one other Slovene refugee stationed at Fort Riley. He knew a Slovene girl in Salina who was attending Marymount College.

It turned out that there was not much need for military intelligence at Fort Riley, and so Frank had a lot of time on his hands. He started taking classes in agricultural economics at nearby Kansas State College in Manhattan and checking in on the girl at Marymount College.

He married the girl. The father of the large Catholic family gave Slava away. One of the Kansas State faculty served as best man. They then moved to Ames, where Frank completed his Ph.D. in agricultural economics on the GI Bill. The first two of their five children were baptized in the basement of St. Thomas Aquinas church. They then moved back to Manhattan, Kan., where Frank taught college and Slava taught high school mathematics.

This was not the life they had planned. No one could have planned their lives. But they never doubted that there was a plan. When doors closed, others opened, and they had the faith to walk through the doors they saw. And behind every door, they found people who could help them. Those people also could not have planned to help refugees from Slovenia, but they had the faith to assist. For a refugee, faith is strength, life is hope, and charity comes from the stewards of God's creation.

I often think about the lessons of my parents' life -- how faith and hope was enough to sustain them when they had nothing but faith and hope. My own path is so much easier -- to help in making St Thomas Aquinas a welcoming place for the next stranger who finds an open door.

-Peter Orazem
Peter and his wife Patricia Cotter have two children. They have been parishioners since 1982. Peter, an ISU professor, is a lector and serves on the Finance & Administration commission. When they arrived at church that first time in August 1982, Father Supple greeted them with "I knew a Frank Orazem. He was here back in the 50's."