Her way was calm and non-aggressive. And that’s exactly how she handled being the first ordained female minister in the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA).

     The denomination was entering a new era, and many members “a good many of them women,” Towner says didn’t want change. So her careful approach helped build “a sense of trust.”

     Fifty years later, as the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) marks the 50th anniversary of the first ordination of a woman as a minister of Word and Sacrament, she says she wouldn’t have handled things any differently.

     Towner, still vibrant and alert, said she turned down television appearances and public-speaking invitations after her ordination on Oct. 24, 1956 in Syracuse, NY.

     “I went right back to Allentown (PA) to my job” as minister of education at First Presbyterian Church, Towner said, and spent the next few years in reflection.

     “I really had a chance to say … ‘Where do you want me to go now (God)? How do you want me to proceed?’ I was constantly asking that,” she says.

     The group of male clergy who had pushed for her ordination encouraged her. And Towner never changed the way she lived out her call. She kept working as First church’s minister of education until 1958, when she was called to the same position at First Presbyterian Church in Kalamazoo, MI. She stayed there until 1969.

     In the fall of that year, she became an associate pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, IN. In 1973 she became co-pastor of Kettle Moraine Parish in Wisconsin, where she stayed until her retirement in 1990.

     Of the career path she chose, Towner says, “I just felt overwhelmingly that I was not the pushy kind.”

     She recalls an important validation she got in 1981, when she was a candidate for moderator of the General Assembly. The Rev. David McShane, a friend and colleague, told her: “I’m convinced you were the one to be the first.”

     Towner lost her bid to become moderator, but was appointed vice moderator.

     Towner’s career choices have been endorsed by the thousands of women who have been ordained as ministers since 1956. The exact number isn’t clear, but includes trailblazers, such as:

     The Rev. Katie Canon, the first African-American Presbyterian woman ordained (in 1974);

     The Rev. Rebecca Reyes, the first female Hispanic-American Presbyterian ordained (1979); and,

     The Rev. Holly Haile Smith, the first Native American Presbyterian woman ordained (1987)

     There are scores of others whose names aren’t in the record books like the Rev. Faye Fedlam, pastor of Sidney Presbyterian Church in Sidney, IA, and the Rev. Mary Alice Haynie, pastor of Southport Presbyterian Church in Southport, NC. Towner’s advice to these and other women clergy: Find your niche, whether in the pulpit or as a seminary administrator or as an author.

     “Find where your talents are best used, and where you would feel comfortable being involved,” she says. “Help to build a world where there is peace. … Work to be healers.”

     Towner’s own niche is one of service, executed with grace. The resident of Sarasota (FL) and member of the Peace River Presbytery chairs the presbytery’s records and overtures committee. And she still preaches once in a while.

     “I’ve kept active” since retirement, she says, and “I’m not stopping.”