Friday, November 20, 2009
A son described the fallen educator as ‘a role model to look up to.’
COLUMBIANA — Columbiana schools will close Monday so the community can pay its respects to a much-respected and much-loved educator.
Cathleen Ann Wagner, 55, of Columbiana, died Wednesday due to complications of the H1N1 virus.
Wagner had been ill for nearly three weeks and spent much of that time in intensive care at the Cleveland Clinic.
She had been diagnosed in 2003 with myasthenia gravis, a neuromuscular disorder that weakens voluntary muscles and suppresses the immune system.
Local tests recently did not clearly indicate that she had the H1N1 virus, but once she was admitted to the Cleveland Clinic, tests showed she had it, according to one of her sons, Benjamin, a graduate student in Columbus.
“None of us expected this,” he said.
She leaves another son, Andrew, a college student who is studying film in Cheswick, Pa., and her husband, Raymond A. Wagner, Jr., a sixth-grade teacher in Columbiana.
The Wagners also were a love story. Benjamin said that his mother and father met on the first day of classes as new teachers in Columbiana in 1976. They were married 11 months later.
She taught kindergarten during most of her career at Joshua Dixon Elementary School. In 1991, she was awarded the Myrtle Miller–Marijane Werner Award for Exemplary Mathematics Teaching by the Ohio Council of Teachers of Mathematics. The following year, she received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching for the State of Ohio.
“She was a role model to look up to,” Benjamin said.
She also sang for many years at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Salem. Benjamin said she cut back because of the myasthenia gravis.
Superintendent Don Mook said counselors and local clergy have been brought in to help students and staff deal with Warner’s death.
Earlier this year, the district implemented comprehensive educational and cleaning programs to prevent colds and the flu. The district’s daily absentee rate remains steady at about 10 percent.
The district this week, through the Columbiana County Board of Health, provided flu vaccines to 434 of about 1,000 students.
Kim Sharshan, the principal at Joshua Dixon, said of Wagner’s life and death: “It was a life well-lived. She was a friend and a colleague. It was a loss to everyone.”
Calling hours will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Saturday and from 2 to 6 p.m. Sunday at Seederly-Mong & Beck Funeral Home in Columbiana.
wilkinson@vindy.com