Vinton County Pastor, Instructor, and Craftsman Steve Garay Serves Community Through Many Roles

When Steve Cheveyo Garay walks out of Keltech for the last time this May, Vinton County doesn't lose a volunteer. It loses the paycheck that has run alongside one. For 25 years, Garay has held together multiple strands of local civic life simultaneously: pastor at Oakview Church of God, Tai Chi and Tai Chi Cane Defense instructor at the Vinton Community Center, leather craftsman, Native American flute player, storyteller, columnist, and director of a Christian writers group. His retirement as prep-department supervisor at Keltech isn't an ending. It's a stress test for the kind of unpaid social infrastructure that small towns like Vinton County rely on but rarely talk about until it starts to fray.

The Pillar at Oakview Church

Garay has served as pastor at Oakview Church of God for a quarter century, long enough that for many congregants he is simply the face of the church. His philosophy of ministry extends well beyond Sunday services. He describes his approach to every form of work and service as doing it "as though you are doing it for the Lord," which he interprets not as religious obligation but as a personal standard: give your very best, in whatever you do, for whoever is in front of you.

That standard has shaped how Garay engages the broader community. His tenure at Oakview has functioned as a platform for faith-based outreach, a hub for neighbors seeking encouragement, and a consistent presence in Vinton County's religious life across administrations, economic cycles, and generational change. Churches in rural Ohio counties often depend on a single long-serving pastor to hold institutional memory and keep programming alive. Garay has been that person at Oakview for two and a half decades.

Tai Chi at the Vinton Community Center

Drive past the Vinton Community Center on a class day and you'll find Garay leading Tai Chi and Tai Chi Cane Defense instruction, two disciplines that serve an often-overlooked need in a county where senior health programming is both essential and difficult to sustain. Tai Chi Cane Defense is particularly relevant for older adults: it builds balance, coordination, and confidence using an assistive device many participants already carry. Garay brings the class not just as an exercise session but as a form of community gathering.

Adult education and wellness programming at rural community centers across Appalachian Ohio depend almost entirely on volunteer instructors. When those instructors age out, burn out, or simply move on, classes disappear. There is no budget line for a replacement. Garay's retirement from Keltech may actually free up more time for these classes, but only if the Vinton Community Center and its participants make clear that the programming is valued and worth continuing.

Craftsman, Musician, and Cultural Keeper

Garay's leather craft and Native American flute playing are not hobbies in any casual sense. They are practiced skills he has developed over years and shared with others as both instructor and demonstrator. Leather craft in particular carries a tactile, transferable quality: Garay's work represents the kind of traditional handcraft that, once it disappears from a community, rarely comes back on its own.

In 2025, Garay was named a Tribal Diplomat for the Central Appalachian Cherokee Tribe after DNA documentation confirmed aspects of his family's oral history. The Central Appalachian Cherokee Tribe operates as a community-based, educational 501(c)(3) organization, not affiliated with federally recognized Cherokee tribes, with a mission centered on preserving regional heritage and supporting community philanthropy. For Garay, the appointment brought formal recognition to a cultural identity he had carried privately for years. His Native American flute playing, leather work, and storytelling traditions now intersect with that role in ways that give his craft a broader community purpose.

A Life Built Across Many Institutions

Before settling into his current constellation of roles, Garay worked as an insurance salesman, which taught him how to read people and communicate across economic backgrounds. He wrote as a columnist, directed a Christian writers group, and spent years as a storyteller, building the kind of cross-disciplinary fluency that makes him effective in settings as different as a church pulpit and a community center classroom. Each of those identities fed the others. The columnist's discipline sharpens the pastor's communication. The storyteller's sense of audience makes the instructor more effective. The craftsman's patience shapes the diplomat's temperament.

His full name, Steve Cheveyo Garay, carries meaning he has leaned into more explicitly in recent years: Cheveyo, a name from Hopi tradition meaning "spirit warrior," reflects the Indigenous cultural thread that runs through his leather work, his music, and his new role with the Central Appalachian Cherokee Tribe.

What Retirement Actually Means for Vinton County

Garay's departure from Keltech in May raises a question that applies to any county where the civic fabric depends on volunteers: what happens when the people holding things together finally have the freedom to stop? In Garay's case, the answer may be more engagement rather than less. Retirement frees time that a full-time job at Keltech consumed. But that time does not automatically flow back into community programs. It requires institutions like Oakview Church of God and the Vinton Community Center to reach out, plan proactively, and make the case that Garay's continued involvement matters.

It also raises a longer-term challenge. Garay's retirement is a visible moment to recruit new instructors for the Vinton Community Center's wellness programming, to identify church leaders who can support Oakview's congregation, and to find craftspeople willing to learn leather work and keep that tradition circulating locally. The profile of one person doing many things well is also an invitation: what skills do you have that Vinton County needs?

How to Get Involved

The most direct ways to support the programs Garay sustains:

• Attend or share information about Tai Chi and Tai Chi Cane Defense classes at the Vinton Community Center. New participants keep the class alive; low attendance is what ends programs.
• Contact Oakview Church of God directly to learn about volunteer opportunities in faith-based outreach and community service.
• If you have leather craft experience or want to learn, reach out through local community networks to connect with Garay before that knowledge walks out the door with him.
• The Central Appalachian Cherokee Tribe, as a 501(c)(3), accepts support for its heritage preservation and community philanthropy mission from anyone who values that work.

Vinton County's volunteer social infrastructure does not announce itself. It shows up on weekday mornings at the community center, on Sunday mornings at Oakview, and in the quiet work of a craftsman who has spent 25 years giving his very best because that is simply what the work requires.