Chasing History: Exploring My Ancestral Roots – Post #76
By Tonya Graham McQuade
John Paul Wagner III
Nov. 25, 1950 - Oct. 23, 2026
Last week while we were traveling in New England, I received the news that my mother’s only sibling, her younger brother John, had been diagnosed with two different types of cancer. Doctors said it had progressed to the point it was beyond treatment. They suggested he return home and begin receiving hospice care, giving him one to two months to live. He returned home on Wednesday and died Friday, Oct. 23 — just two days later. Too quickly for me to get out there for a visit to see him one last time (which I had planned for the first week of November), too quickly for my aunt Debbie to adjust to the news or to his new treatment plan, too quickly for family goodbyes — and a sad reminder that life can turn on a dime. I don’t think I’ve ever actually used that expression, but it certainly seems to fit here.
Since I did not get the chance to say goodbye, I feel the need to write. That has always been my means of processing news, dealing with my emotions, making sense of the world … and celebrating those I love. So, in this blog post, I want to celebrate my Uncle John’s life and share some of the memories I have of him from these past six decades. Many of those memories center around the things I know he loved: model airplanes, the comic strip Peanuts, music, cars, Coors beer, his pets, and his wife Debbie.
John was eight years my mother’s junior, born Nov. 25, 1950 in Chicago, Illinois, to John Paul Wagner, Jr. and Rose Muriel (Brandt) Wagner. At the time, the family was living at 5213 Ashland Avenue in downtown Chicago, but when John was three, his parents purchased a home on W. 88th Street in Hometown, Illinois, and that is where he grew up. That’s also the house I remember visiting many times as a child.
My mother, Dorothy Ann (Wagner) Graham, here holds her baby brother John in early 1951.
John attended Catholic school for the first eight years of his education, then moved on to Oak Lawn Community High School. I have a copy of his eighth grade graduation picture, and I found a few digitized yearbook pictures online from his high school years. I also found a photo that shows he was a member of the Frosh-Soph Swim Team — something I had never known about him.
First Communion, Elementary School, and Eighth Grade Graduation Photos
John appears in the front row, fourth from the left, in this 1966 yearbook photo of the Oak Lawn Community High School Frosh-Soph Swim Team.
I know one thing John enjoyed doing at this time was making model cars and airplanes – I remember he had many of the airplanes hanging from his bedroom ceiling, and as a kid, I thought they looked really cool. My brothers must have thought so as well — they both also made model cars and planes in their younger years. Perhaps John also had model trains or ships – I’m not sure. I know my grandfather had a train set we saw at least once at Christmas. For whatever reason, though, it’s the airplanes I most remember.
I also remember him introducing me to the song “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,” by the Royal Guardsmen. I thought it was such a funny song at the time, not really understanding its history back then but enjoying the image of Snoopy flying around in his airplane, taking part in an air battle. To be honest, at the time I thought “Baron Von Richthofen” was a made-up person! How many songs do we hear years later and suddenly, unexpectedly, understand them at a completely different level?
Uncle John introduced me to this song when I was young — I’m pretty sure he gave it to me on a “45” record.
Snoopy and music are two other things I very much associate with my Uncle John. I think every birthday card he ever sent me had something to do with Snoopy or other characters from the Peanuts comic strip. I’ve got many of those cards saved in a box in the attic. Perhaps it was because of him I started checking out Peanuts books from my elementary school library. I enjoyed reading about Charlie Brown, Linus, Snoopy, Lucy, Sally, Peppermint Patty, Marcie, Schroeder … the whole gang. About ten years ago, Mike and I took our kids Aaron and Anna to the Charles Schulz Museum up in Santa Rosa and enjoyed learning more about Peanuts history – including the role Schulz played in helping to break down racial and gender barriers with characters like Franklin, a black boy who joins their class and becomes their friend, and Peppermint Patty (aka. “Chuck”), who was quite the tomboy and athlete for her day. I thought of Uncle John when we were there, thinking how much he would have liked that museum and wishing he could see it.
John also had an impact on my “music education.” While my parents listened to artists like Johnny Cash, the Oakridge Boys, Barbra Streisand, and soundtracks from various musicals, John listened to “cool” music. When we were there for a visit the summer after my eighth grade year, he made me a mixed tape that he titled “Tonya’s Illinois Tour, 8-30-80,” including songs by artists such as Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, The Knack, Cat Stevens, Barry Manilow, Boston, the Eagles, and Heart. You can see some of the song titles in the photo below. One funny story that comes out of this: since I did not have the lyrics for any of these songs, I “mis-sung” many of them for years – and I still can’t listen to “Life in the Fast Lane” without thinking they are singing, “What did the bat say.” LOL.
Uncle John made me this mixed tape: Tonya’s Illinois Tour, 8-30-80.
I also remember that John had some Beatles records with their photo on the disc — I had never seen that before and thought it was pretty amazing. I didn’t know they could do that. My parents were never really Beatles fans, but I always loved their music, and once again, that added to Uncle John’s “coolness” factor. Later, I learned he and Debbie were big Loggins and Messina fans, and though I never saw Loggins and Messina together, I saw each of them perform separately at a concert venue near me where I sometimes volunteer, and I definitely thought of both John and Debbie as I listened to Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina.
I’m pretty sure Uncle John had the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” photo disc.
As a funny side note, I also saw Kenny Loggins in college when I went with my high school friend George to see James Taylor perform at the Santa Barbara Bowl. There, sitting a few rows in front of us in the audience, was Kenny Loggins with his son. He lived in Santa Barbara at the time and still lives there today. We got a big kick out of that — and George has had fun telling the story since then, though he has often had to work hard to convince people he is telling the truth!
While not a song, I also definitely associate a “not so nice” rhyme with my Uncle John. He would say it to me when I was young, and I’m pretty sure he even wrote it in a card. He may have thought it was funnier than I did, but I can still distinctly hear his voice any time I think of it:
Tonya is a nut;
She has a rubber butt.
Every time she turns around,
It goes putt-putt.
I said it wasn’t a very nice rhyme, right? LOL. I have no idea if John was a poetry fan, and if he was, whose poetry he might have liked — but, based on that poem, I’m pretty sure he would have enjoyed Shel Silverstein or Roald Dahl more than Emily Dickinson or Ralph Waldo Emerson.
My brother Andy got the chance to sit in Uncle John’s red 1971 Triumph Spitfire in the summer of 1985.
Uncle John also loved cars. I remember him having a cute little red convertible, a 1971 Triumph Spitfire, and getting to go for a ride in that (did I ever get to do that?) — or even just sit in it — was definitely a treat. You knew you had to be careful around Uncle John’s car — no food, drinks, or horseplay were allowed. Not being much of a car person, I can’t tell you much more about his car. I do know, though, that at some point, John started taking photographs for AutoBuff magazine, and he ended up taking photos of my brother Cam’s car. Those photos appeared in the magazine along with an article about the joys of a first car — something my brother was pretty excited about. He also had a skateboard — and I remember Cam and I both asking for skateboards for Christmas after one of our visits to Illinois.
Uncle John riding Cam on his skateboard - probably around 1971 (we actually lived in Highland Park, Illinois, from 1970-71, while my father taught at the high school there)
John also loved Coors beer — which, in the 1970s, he could not buy in Illinois. It was, in fact, only sold in eleven western states back then and could not be sold east of the Mississippi River. Apparently, the whole plot of the movie Smokey and the Bandit (1977) revolved around smuggling 400 cases of Coors beer from Texas to Georgia in under 28 hours. That’s what I just read online, anyway, when I asked Google why Coors was not sold in Illinois. LOL. At any rate, I remember my mom bringing Uncle John Coors beer on pretty much every visit we made to Illinois throughout the 1970s and early 80s. She also, as I recall, bought him a Coors shirt, a Coors beer glass, and even a Coors hat made out of actual Coors cans crocheted together! LOL. I wish I had a picture of him wearing that hat to share, but here you can see him wearing the shirt and holding a Coors glass while drinking his beer, as well as an example of the kind of hat my mom bought for him.
When I visited Uncle John and Aunt Debbie in June of 2000 with my kids Aaron and Anna and my first husband, the kids and I got to see firsthand another of John’s loves: his pets. Both John and my mom definitely got the animal gene. With my mom, it was cats, dogs, chickens, a goose, mud turtles, hummingbirds, mountain gorillas, lions ... you name it. With John, it was his bunnies and his special dog baby, Panda.
This collage includes photos from our visit to Illinois in June 2000, when the kids first met Great Uncle John and Aunt Debbie’s bunnies.
Aaron and Anna had lots of fun holding the bunnies on that first visit when they were just two and five, and again ten years later when we visited for a family reunion my mother organized. In addition to that, Debbie and my mom shared photos with me over the years of John with Panda and with my mom’s cat, Cinder. Animals seemed to calm him — to bring him a sense of peace.
This photo is labeled “John on Easter, 4-6-06,” and shows him on my parents’ chair in the living room, petting their cat Cinder.
Mike and I have intentionally chosen not to have pets, which led my mom at times to wonder whose “animal gene” I had inherited. It was certainly not hers. We like to travel, though, and pets make that difficult. I do enjoy cats, and when I decide to settle down someday and spend more time in a reclining chair than an airplane seat, maybe I’ll decide to have a cat again (though Mike says he’s allergic – I’m not really sure if that’s true). I did have two cats and a dog in the kids’ early years, with one cat still present at the time I married Mike. He liked that cat, Dodger, who spent most of his time outdoors and made sure our yard was free of mice and rats. After Dodger was gone, the kids had to be satisfied with short-lived goldfish and hamsters and watching the many squirrels in our backyard tree.
But John loved his pets — and since he did not love traveling, they gave him a good excuse to stay home. The last time I saw him in California was for my first wedding back in 1989, where he served as the photographer. He also must have briefly visited my parents in Antioch in April 2006 because I have a photo from my mom’s album that shows him sitting in one of their chairs, petting her cat Cinder. The photo says he was there for Easter. I can’t remember why I didn’t see him then. Debbie has visited numerous times over the years – after Aaron’s birth, for my wedding to Mike, for Anna’s wedding to Nick, for my mom’s memorial service — and for that I am grateful. I wish I could have seen more of John.
He also loved my Aunt Debbie. I first met Debbie during our visit to Illinois the summer after my fourth grade year. I kept a travel journal that summer because — well, even then I loved writing, and we made that year’s drive into a much more adventurous one than usual. Between June 20 and July 1, 1976, I wrote about stops in the California Redwoods; Oregon’s Hells Canyon; Idaho’s Massacre Rocks State Park; Yellowstone National Park and the Beartooth Mountains in Montana and Wyoming; an amazing KOA Ranch Camp in Montana where we caught trout and took horseback riding lessons; the Crow and and Cheyenne Indian Reservations; “Custer’s Last Stand” at Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument; North Dakota; Minnesota; and “Yogi Bear’s Jellystone Park” in the the Wisconsin Dells. We finally arrived “at grandmother’s house” in Hometown, Illinois, on July 1st.
On July 2nd I wrote in my journal: “John came home at 10 till 6 with Debbie. Debbie seems real nice. I think I will like her even better than Diane.” Diane had been his girlfriend the last time we had visited Illinois.
After that, Debbie became very much a part of my life — becoming my “pen pal” for many years and always remembering birthdays and holidays with special cards. I still have those early letters saved in the same attic box with John’s cards. I was excited to see her and John again when we visited the summer after my eighth grade year.
A family visit in July 1980 - Cameron (11), Andrew (6), and Tonya (13)
Then, the following Fall, on Oct. 5, 1980, John and Debbie came to California to get married. We all went up to Lake Tahoe, with the actual wedding taking place in Stateline, Nevada. I — being the only “single lady” there — caught Debbie’s bouquet. That became a very special memory.
John & Debbie on their wedding day — Oct. 5, 1980.
Here I am catching the bouquet at age 13 (I turned 14 the following month).
The last time I saw Uncle John was in Chicago when my mother organized a “Brandt Family Reunion” back in 2010. She was returning at the same time for her fiftieth high school reunion. I enjoyed seeing the extended family, introducing them to my husband Mike, and meeting many distant cousins for the first time. It was the first time we had ever done a family reunion. It was also Mike’s first time in Chicago, so we had fun “playing tourist” with the kids while we were there — seeing the Cloud Gate (aka. “The Bean”) at Millennium Park, taking a water taxi along the Chicago River, riding the ferris wheel at Navy Pier, making a stop at Wrigley Field, visiting the Hershey Store and the American Girl store, and going to the top of Sears Tower (or whatever it’s now called) for panoramic views of the Chicago skyline. The kids also enjoyed seeing John and Debbie’s bunnies again.
Aaron & Anna with Great Uncle John and his pet bunny in September 2010
Both Aaron and Ann were able to visit Uncle John and Aunt Debbie since then, however – Aaron when his Chorale singing group from The Master’s University toured the Midwest in the summer of 2014, and Anna with her husband Nick when they were in Chicago in July 2026 for a wedding. Mike and I have plans to visit Chicago in May 2027 and had hoped to spend time with John and Debbie then. Sadly, that visit will now be a very different one than we had expected.
I’m glad, at least, that I spoke to Uncle John on the phone in August. I had texted him to see if I could “interview” him for the blog series I was writing about “Exploring Burgenland.” That series details our summer visit to Burgenland, Austria, where both Janos “John” Paul Wagner and Anna Halper Wagner (John’s grandparents; my great-grandparents) were from. When they left their hometowns of Unterwart and Oberdorf in 1909 and 1913, however, both towns were still part of Hungary. They, along with thousands of others from that area, immigrated to Chicago, which became known as “Burgenland’s largest city.” I was curious to know what he remembered about his Wagner and Halper ancestors. I’m glad we at least had that final conversation. If you want to read more about his recollections of his grandparents, you can read that blog post HERE
My next visit to Chicago will not be the fun one I had hoped for in May. It will be instead for Uncle John’s memorial service on Thursday, Nov. 5, where I will be sharing some of these thoughts. He would have been 76 on Nov. 25 — rather ironically the same number as this blog post — but sadly, he will not get to celebrate that birthday. Instead, his family and friends will be gathering to say their goodbyes.
And so here I say goodbye, Uncle John. I hope you are now free of physical pain and that you are reunited with my mom and your parents enjoying the peace and comforts of Heaven. Thanks for the love you shared and the special memories you gave me over the years.
Here we all were at the Brandt Family Reunion — Mike & Tonya McQuade; Aaron & Anna Silva; Doug & Dotty Graham, and John & Debbie Wagner.
