Wearing a half smile, Walter Peter Wagner stares from a worn page of Ohio University's Athena yearbook. As he poses in a suit and tie among his peers for the J Club group picture, he's only months away from graduating with the Class of 1950. His next destination is medical school.

 

Pete Wagner (second from left) and his friends pose with the bright green "OU CAT" car they drove in the '40s.

At that moment, young Pete, as he was known, probably never imagined his future coming full circle, his legacy leading his children to start their adult lives at Ohio University and follow the example he set as a caring physician.

During the summer of 1998 - 48 years after Pete earned a pre-med degree - his youngest son, Tom, became the seventh of his 10 children to graduate from Ohio University. Six of the graduates earned degrees from the university's College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Pete died 14 years ago, but his children carry with them two of his most endearing traits: a love for Ohio University and an instinctive doctor's compassion.
 
 

Pete (right) plays harmonica during a campus event.

"It still surprises me when I think about it. It's amazing they all decided to do the same thing," says Bernie Wagner, who still lives in Amherst, Ohio, the community where she and Pete raised their 10 children. "It's something Pete was terribly proud of, especially because he never told them they had to go to medical school or attend Ohio University. They could have done anything in the world."

Yet while the Wagner children were growing up, medicine was their world. Pete worked at a hospital less than a mile from the family's home, and when he wanted to spend one-on-one time with his children, he sometimes had to take them along to work.

Mark Wagner, DO '83, remembers accompanying his father on rounds at the hospital as a boy. Cynthia Wagner Ochs, DO '85, recalls sitting in the emergency room while he delivered babies. Tom Wagner, BS '94 and DO '98, says he grew up hearing medical talk around the dinner table. And the others - Paul Wagner, BS '85 and DO '89; Connie Wagner Strbich, BS '87 and DO '91; and Tim Wagner, BS '90 and DO '94 - remember medicine being the foundation of the family.

"He truly was a small-town doctor, and he was a great man," says Cynthia, who practices in Michigan with her siblings Paul and Connie. "The values our parents instilled in us were brought out by medicine - loving people and caring about how they feel."

Maybe it was Pete's magic - the kind of personality people were drawn to - that influenced his children so powerfully.
 
 

Tim Creamer The Wagner family physicians (back row, from left) Tim, Tom, Pete, Paul and Mark, (front row) Cynthia and Connie.

"He showed us that he really liked what he did for a living, and everybody saw that," says Mark, a physician in Amherst. "He was a big extrovert, and he loved a crowd. The man had a presence. When he walked in a room, he had the gift of making everybody feel like they were special."

Mark was the family's first child to attend the College of Osteopathic Medicine, arriving in 1979, four years after the college was created by the Ohio Legislature as a primary care medical education institution. The college now graduates the highest percentage of primary care doctors of any school in the state.

Pete, an osteopathic physician himself who was educated at the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Missouri, supported the creation of the medical school at Ohio University. In fact, the college recruited Pete to join the faculty, but he turned down the offer because of his loyalty to his patients and his full family life in Amherst. Throughout his career, however, he trained Ohio University medical students in his practice.

And as their father kept up his practice in Amherst, the children - one by one - headed south to Athens. When Mark was doing clinicals as an advanced medical student in 1981, Cynthia was accepted to the College of Osteopathic Medicine, Paul began his undergraduate degree and Lisa Wagner Fleury, BSC '83 - the only Ohio University graduate who didn't go into medicine - was an upperclassman. Connie arrived in 1983, and Tim started in 1986. The last of the brood, Tom, began classes in 1989.

"It wasn't like we all planned to be doctors. Truthfully, it was a natural progression for all of us," says Tom, who is doing his medical residency in northeast Ohio. "It didnít seem unusual at the time."

In the early '80s, when the family trend toward Ohio University was evident, oldest sibling Pete Wagner, also an osteopathic doctor who like his father graduated from Kirksville College, bought a three-bedroom house on Grosvenor Avenue that Paul, Connie, Tim and Tom lived in throughout their academic careers.
 
 

John Sattler The entire Wagner family while on campus for Tom's graduation in 1998.

"It seems like everyone lived in that house," Mark says. "When relatives came down, it was packed. It was like our second home."

Athens did become a second home to the Wagner family during the two decades the children attended Ohio University. Before every graduation, Bernie planned a family reunion weekend at Lake Hope in neighboring Vinton County. Tomís graduation in June 1998 warranted the largest family reunion of all - encompassing the whole clan, including 32 grandchildren.

It wasn't until that weekend that the reality of being the last Wagner sibling to graduate hit Tom.

"It's really humbling to realize I'm the last one to go through this," he says. "It's pretty incredible."

The thrill of finishing school, however, was bittersweet for the children who graduated after Pete died in April 1985. Cynthia was just two months away from finishing medical school.

"That was hard for me, but I knew he was smiling," she says. "He was really proud of us and proud we went to OU."

Despite his absence, Pete always is with the family.

"We talk about that all the time, asking 'Wouldn't Dad love this or love that?'" Bernie says. "He was sorely missed during the graduations. The kids would say 'I'm sorry Dad can't be here, but really, he is here.' He would be proud of his legacy."

With seven doctors in the family, as well as four spouses who are physicians, the Wagners certainly attract a lot of attention. Other doctors jokingly ask the Wagners if they get continuing medical education credits during family reunions. And the line, "Is there a doctor in the house?" rouses laughter every time.

"I love seeing people's reactions when they learn about our family. The first thing out of their mouths is 'What?'" Tom says. "If somebody asks me why I went into medicine, I tell them I figured I should go into something that no one else in my family has ever done."