Photo: From left, Trent Wagler, Brian Dickel and Eric Brubaker of the Steel Wheels, Russ Neufeld, Kendra Neufeld, and Jay Lapp of the Steel Wheels, last September when the band stopped in to visit Russ, who was undergoing chemotherapy for Stage 2 lymphoblastic lymphoma. Russ is now in Omaha undergoing a bone marrow transplant, and the band will play a benefit concert for him Sept. 20 at Bethel College (courtesy photo).

When The Steel Wheels come to Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas, Sept. 20 to do a benefit concert, it will be one more link in a chain of connections aiding Russ Neufeld in his battle with cancer.

Over the last 14 months, Neufeld and his wife, Kendra, have been supported in nearly every way possible by a community of family, their congregation and the Mennonite organizations each work for.

In July 2015, Neufeld, the IT director at Hesston (Kansas) College since 2010, began experiencing chest pains and shortness of breath while on a family vacation in Colorado.

The eventual diagnosis was Stage 2 lymphoblastic lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Neufeld immediately began a six-month course of rigorous (even “brutal”) chemotherapy, finishing in early 2016.

Russ Neufeld and Kendra Duerksen met as freshmen at Hesston College in 1995. Russ grew up in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, with his last few years of high school in British Columbia, where his father, Clare Neufeld, was a Mennonite pastor in the Delta-Surrey area. Kendra came from Mountain Lake, Minnesota.

After finishing their two-year degrees, both Russ and Kendra went east, to Harrisonburg, Virginia. Kendra completed a social work degree at Eastern Mennonite University. Russ went to James Madison University, majoring in physics (specifically, the physics of sound).

Russ began working for Mennonite Media (then part of Mennonite Board of Missions of the Mennonite Church) as a college student, in the recording studio. When he got his green card in 1999, he went full-time with what’s now called MennoMedia, taking on the webmaster position. He continued in IT with Mennonite Mission Network of Mennonite Church USA for several years after denominational merger in 2002. He took the position with Hesston in 2010.

During college, Kendra worked as a CNA (nursing aide), first at Schowalter Villa in Hesston, then at Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community. She continued at VMRC as a social worker after graduation. There, she met another social worker named Peggy Brubaker, married to Eric Brubaker, who now plays fiddle for The Steel Wheels.

Russ and Trent Wagler, the Steel Wheels’ lead singer, also met during the Virginia years. Both were in bands – “a bit more punk than the Steel Wheels,” says Russ, who plays electric bass. “We would often open for each other.”

“I remember Russ as one of those [examples] of a free-spirited Canadian,” says Wagler, “who looked for what was fun and joyful but also wanted to learn and get as much as he could out of the world. I thought he was inspiring – I looked up to him.”

The Neufelds moved to Newton in 2002, where they had their two children, Ethan, 12, and Natalie, 9. Kendra has worked in development at Mennonite Mission Network for almost 12 years.

Wagler, Brubaker and Brian Dickel (string bass) of The Steel Wheels, all EMU alumni, had continued to make music in various forms, sometimes in combination, in the ensuing years. At some point along the way, Wagler met mandolin player Jay Lapp, and the two formed an almost instant “musical connection,” Wagler says. “We began scheming about how we could play together.”

In 2007, the band was fairly newly formed as The Steel Wheels and they played at Bethel College as part of a “Mennonite tour” to Mennonite colleges and schools in the Midwest. Though Wagler and Russ Neufeld had run into each other occasionally over the years, that was where they reconnected, Neufeld says.

“I told them, if they were ever back playing within a 50-mile radius, I’d be glad to help them with selling merchandise,” Neufeld says.

The Steel Wheels decided to go into music full-time, touring about 100 days a year, in 2010. In 2012, they first came to the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival at Winfield, Kansas, and, Wagler says, were warmly welcomed at the Neufeld and friends campsite.

At Winfield, and at the numerous other concerts the band has done in south-central Kansas since 2010 (Wagler’s parents, Howard and Cathy Wagler, live in the Hutchinson area, where Howard is  pastor at Journey Mennonite Church), Russ and Kendra have almost always been there to help sell merchandise, freeing band members to talk with friends and fans.

Until the 2015 festival, when Neufeld was in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy. The Steel Wheels dedicated their song “The Race” to Neufeld on the main stage, and stopped in at the cancer center in Wichita to visit the Neufelds after the festival.

Neufeld completed his chemotherapy in early 2016 and started what was supposed to be several years of maintenance chemo.

Friends, family, employers and congregation had been supporting the Neufelds throughout – directly and via Facebook. Kendra Neufeld’s parents live in Newton and her sister and brother and their families are in the Newton area. Most of them are active at Shalom Mennonite Church in Newton.

A group of friends from Russ’s Newton band, The Ne’erdowells, Hesston College, Mennonite Mission Network and Shalom, organized “Run with Russ,” a fundraiser last October for which there were lime-green (the color of lymphoma awareness) T-shirts and in which Russ was able to participate (as a walker).

In June 2016, tests showed a recurrence of the cancer. This time, the treatment needed was determined to be a bone marrow transplant with bone marrow from an outside donor.

Russ’s brother, Ryan Neufeld, was a match. Russ is now in Omaha, Nebraska, after receiving the transplant. He must stay in Omaha 100 days post-transplant, waiting to see if there will be a rejection. Since someone needs to be with him at all times, Kendra is in Omaha for 100 days, too.

Her Mennonite Mission Network colleagues, Kendra says, “wanted to do something to help us [with medical expenses].” The first idea was to get The Steel Wheels, who were touring in the general area of northern Indiana, to do a benefit concert in Goshen or Elkhart in early September, but the band wasn’t able to fit that into their schedule.

However, uncharacteristically, they had a free day following this year’s Walnut Valley Festival, where they will be Sept. 17-18, before playing a gig in Kansas City. And so the Sept. 20 benefit concert at Bethel College was born.

It will be at 7 p.m. in Memorial Hall on the Bethel campus. There are no advance ticket sales – there is a suggested $20 donation at the door for adults, $10 for students and children are free. They will also be live-streaming the concert via Concert Window, so people from across the country can log in and view the concert for a donation of any size.

When Wagler stopped in with the rest of the band to visit the Neufelds last September, “I saw a man who was very inspiring in his attitude,” he recalls. “That attitude was: ‘This is me. I can do this – I don’t think I could watch my spouse or my kid go through this, but I can do it.’

“It struck me, sitting there with him, how unfair things are, how quickly things can change. [The band] has been another spectator in the process of dealing with this disease.

“We’re not a ‘Christian’ band. We’re not a ‘Mennonite’ band. But we have this connection that we really feel – a sense of connectivity to a larger body, when we’re out there on the road. It’s amazing.”

The Neufelds have been an important part of the band’s “sense of connectivity” in south-central Kansas, Wagler says.

Now the Steel Wheels takes its place in an even larger web of connections supporting Russ and Kendra Neufeld in a race where they hope to finish ahead of cancer.