Mary Eastwood Wagner

My mother Mary Ann Eastwood Wagner is one of my heroines. Born in 1920 and raised in Vallejo, California, she received her nursing diploma from St. Mary’s College of Nursing in San Francisco and her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of California, Berkeley. The 1940s found her a nurse in the U.S. Navy during World War II and a public health nurse with the Alameda County Health Department. 

In 1949 she married Leo P. Wagner and they immediately began their fifty years of married life with nine children: Mary Ann, Bill, John, Larry, Maggie, Joani, Bob, Kathy, and Geri. Not surprisingly, the following years were filled with all the typical activities of big family life: cooking, laundry, camping trips, basketball and baseball games, grocery shopping, PTA meetings, more basketball games, packing lunches, and carpooling. But, when her youngest, Geri, started school she swiftly returned to one of her passions, nursing, and found a part-time position at a local convalescent hospital. 

The following years were filled with attending more basketball games; working at local convalescent hospitals; watching her children grow, marry, and have children; traveling with Leo throughout the United States in their small motor home; volunteering with the Santa Cruz Hospice Project; taking writing classes at Cabrillo Community College; and making baby quilts for her fourteen grandchildren. After a long and rich life, Mary died at the age of 80.