In the great, grand cosmic scheme of the universe, Lucille Wagener is on the outside looking in. Her picture was never on the cover of Time, let alone the front page of this newspaper. She never advised the president of the United States. She never was the subject of a movie and never was interviewed for “60 Minutes.”
Yet for all the things she was not, Lucille Wagener’s story is truly worth the telling.
Brought up in Long island, she attended the College of William and Mary in Virginia where she majored in English and minored in music and French. It was there she met and later married her husband Anthony. When Anthony was hired by a paint company they first moved to Chicago, and in 1949 came to Park Forest as one of the first 500 families to settle in a fledgling town without sidewalks.
“They bought our only home at 106 Blackhawk while it was still under construction,” recalls Tom, one of the Wagener’s five sons. As in the case of almost all the first families, when the husband was working during the day, the wife quickly became involved in the building of the community.
As a result of her contracting polio during one of the last epidemics of the once-dread disease, Lucille used swimming as an effective therapy and the entire family, including sons John, Larry, Phil, and Paul along with Tom, became lifelong members of the newly created Aqua Center.
Lucille was active in the Park Forest Garden Club, the Olympia Fields osteopathic Hospital (before it became part of the St. James network), and in church work with Trinity Lutheran Church where she sang with the choir. She guided the Chansonettes, a women’s chorus that was first founded in 1954, which today, under the direction of Ruth Smith, still gives concerts.
The Wagener family worked and flourished. In 1992 Lucille and Anthony were presented with the “volunteers of the year” award from the village of Park Forest. Anthony died in 2005 and later Lucille moved to the Brookdale senior housing complex in Olympia Fields.
Last month, she celebrated her 100th birthday at a Chicago Heights restaurant where she was saluted by her sons, daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. At this milestone she is a prime example of the unsung multitudes who build society and who also provide solid foundations for the rest of us.
More Top Picks Diffuser
Three cheers, I say, and three cheers more for Lucille Wagener.
One more birthday
On Friday, the 102nd birthday of jazz legend Billie Holiday will be celebrated at Governors State University with Mark DiSuvero’s sculpture “Yes! For Lady Day” forming the centerpiece for the festivities.
The event is part of the three-month-long “Let Them Eat Jazz,” celebration of jazz, an original American art form, being held in various south suburban venues. The series of events, sponsored by the Southland Arts and Municipal Business Alliance, commemorates the first commercial jazz recordings 100 years ago.
The DiSuvero work, made of steel I-beams, a railroad tank car and steel cables, is part of the school’s Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park, will be the focal point of the six-hour event, which begins with a walk to the artwork. Along with discussions about both the sculptor and the singers, there will be a birthday cake for Billie as well as screenings of a documentary about DiSuvero and the film biography of Holiday “Lady Sings the Blues.”
Holiday was 18 when she made her first commercial recording in 1933. She had a thin, raspy contralto voice that mirrored both the words she sang and the mood she felt. She sang as a jazz soloist might play an instrument.
I saw Billie Holiday sing once. It was on television and I needed to Google the date – 1957. She would die at the age of 44 two years later. They would write that it was drugs and booze that did it. They would write there was never a better jazz singer. They are right.
Jerry Shnay is a freelance journalist and can be reached at [email protected].