The Life of my Uncle, Philip C. Wagner

Every generation has one or more souls that seem to want to carry on a particular trait that is … shall we say different. My uncle Philip was one in a long line of rebels on my father’s side of the family.
I love the colorful characters that pepper my family and even thinking of them now makes me smile.
I think I smile knowingly, because I am a part of that continuation of a long tradition of Wagner’s wanting to break the mold.
We are all variations on a theme and none of us appear in this reality quite the same. What we hold in common is a trait that determines that we are not going to let the cultural norms define our existence.
While I can see backwards only four generations, I am sure if I was a genealogist sleuth, that we would find many more.
My great grandfather (supposedly) came from Austria to Ellis Island and brought a horse. He raced that horse in the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. The horse did not win but did well enough in the race that he was able to sell that horse and then promptly disappeared for years.
When he reappeared, from that point on, he would say on his paperwork that he was born in New York City, when his paperwork at Ellis Island says that he was born in Austria. After marrying he demanded that his children only speak English and not any German even though (with the Wagner name) there is clearly a German lineage.
On many levels that is understandable because of the many conflicts that included Germany over that time period, but he always seemed to remain a bit of a mystery to our family. He never spoke about his family and never seemed to miss them or long to go back to Austria.
The joke in the family was that he was a horse thief and could not go back. That actually could have been true.
The Wagner side of the family is filled with jokesters, tricksters, sharp minds, and a quick wit.
Growing up I learned that many truths could be revealed if one listened to the jokes and learned to read between the lines.
Often truth is hidden in plain sight. One just needs to know where to look and to notice the mannerisms, such as a tilt of a head, a wry smile with the statement, or the glimmer of deeper knowing in a look.
My genetics are a mixture of German and Irish lineage. Though I am a mutt through and through, having discovered in my genetic testing, a large percentage of Eastern Asian and some Sub-Saharan African thrown in for good measure.
I love my genetically speckled past. If I had known it sooner, I might have been able to get into dancing with Alvin Ailey in New York (one of my favorite companies). At that time, Alvin Ailey required you to be a person of color. Unfortunately, I look as Irish as the day is long with my auburn hair and hazel eyes.
I believe my colorful mixed genetic heritage gives me many of my unique qualities that stand out and stand up to the tests of time.
After all, mutts are always stronger in the long run.
As my family heritage moved through the generations, my grandfather and his brother Charles, illegally bootlegged liquor into Brooklyn for the mob during prohibition days. There is clearly a dark sheep quality that likes to live at the edges of danger.
Clearly, there are genetics that seem to love to break the rules or at least bend them.
My uncle Charles was a bookie in New York for the horse races and sporting events. He made his living organizing, accepting, and paying out of bets in sporting events in New York City. This was back in the old days where such a thing was illegal. But my family knowingly brushed his job off as not be a super high crime.
The stories go that the Irish policemen (back then the Irish would stick together) would come and tell my uncle Charles to stop taking bets because they were going to have to arrest him, but he wouldn’t. Eventually they just left him alone.
This is where I get to say that when a Wagner sets their mind to a task … they will rarely deviate from that focus.
Stubborn is a word that one could use for the Wagner side of my family. But we have a strength in us that does not buckle when pushed. And we are not as afraid as most. We feel fear but tend to lean into it rather than run or collapse.
And when our dander is up we can be a force to be reckoned with. Let’s just say that we don’t like people telling us what to do.
It is a trait that continues to this day.
That rebel thread runs from the Irish lines as well as the Austrian ones. But it is the Irish side that can make a great story about it and make jokes while we manipulate and cajole others to get what we want.
I like having a family that is a cast of unique characters that live and play in outrageous ways and know how to keep secrets.
Let’s just say family reunions are … interesting and entertaining. We are not a shy bunch. Outrageous is more the correct word. Audacious another good description.
In my grandfather’s line (on the Wagner side), he married another Irish woman, and they had 3 boys. My father being the oldest, his brother Ray (7 years his junior, and the baby of that marriage was Philip.
When Philip was 3 years old, their mother (Kay) died of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. My father was graduating from High School at that time and Philip was very young.
You know what they say about someone that is the baby of the family.
That they are spoiled!
I like to think of it as if the kinks were worked out with the older kids and by the time the last one shows up, the rules have slacked a bit and so the baby of the family gets away with more.
Obviously, you might pick up in that inuendo that I am also a baby in my family. LOL! See you are catching on to the Wagner way of communication!
Philip must have been a handful to my stepmother. She stepped up and into taking care of three boys when she had her own daughter as well. The only grandmother I knew was my step grandmother. Her name was Eleanor and I adored her.
I am pretty sure that Philip was probably outrageous from the beginning. I have never seen Philip be anything other than himself. And when he was younger, he was handsome, daring, and smart like a fox.
Notice I said fox!

See you are starting to learn to read between the lines. By the end of my story, you might be able to pick up many smaller suggestions that lead into other magical and perhaps hidden places that will be more in my second book.
Philip was always the life of the party. So was my father! When they got together you could practically guarantee that things would become very interesting. They had their own “Wagner” way of communicating. When I was a child, their style of communication seemed almost another language. There way of communicating was filled with subtle twists in language and wording that left one knowing that something else was being said but that to a child’s mind those hidden treasures seemed a curiosity.
From this dynamic family I learned quickly that much more is always being said in any instance. I learned from a young age to recognize the subtle shifts that happened in body language and tone when there was more being implied.
It made for moments when you felt as if you were watching the greatest improv, and this was my family. We were something between a crazy circus and Circ de Soleil.
Philip could make anyone come out of their shell. It was a Wagner trait that my father also had but he used his mostly in business. Philip was a soul that loved to connect with people, and he loved to hobnob with the most powerful and wealthy people.
Because of his ability to “schmooze” he got invited to crazy parties and places. He loved hanging around those with money and he loved to play outrageously! His lifestyle was to always take things much further than anyone else would dare. Just because he could.
To Philip most things were to try, experience, and he loved to just see if he could get away with it.
One of my favorite stories of having my uncle as a misguided chaperone while I studied at SAB, was one day that he called and said that he wanted to take me to dinner. He wanted to go to his favorite greasy diner (Philip’s appetite to indulge himself with food was a part of his extreme personality and temperament).
He picks me up and off we go. I think this is going to be such a treat for a starving dancer to have a nice dinner. We get to the diner and outside he tells me (with a gleam in his eye) that we are going to play a little game.
Instantly, I know that what he is about to say is not what I want to hear.
He explains that we are going to go into the diner separately. Sit in separate booths. I am to order anything I want to eat. He said, get a salad and soup. Get a main course and get two desserts to go. He specifies the dessert he wants.
Then he explains that when I am done, I am to ask for the check. Meanwhile, he is going to order a coffee and Danish and read the paper. When I ask for my bill, he will also ask for his. When I get the bill, he is going to come and pass me pretending that he is going to the bathroom. I am to leave the bill on the table, and he will switch the bills as he goes past.
I am then to immediately get up and pay my bill and leave. He will take his time in the bathroom and then come back and call the waitress to tell her that he got the wrong bill because he only had a coffee and a Danish. Flustered the waitress will get him the correct bill and he will then meet me outside but down the street at the turn of the next block, after he has paid.
Nervously, I asked why we were doing this? Did he not have the money to pay for dinner? If that was the problem, I could just pay for mine.
He laughed at me and said, “No! That is not the issue. He had the money. This was just a game to see if he could get away with it!”

Now, I am a “Miss Goody Two-Shoes” and such things were never done in my world. I did not want to do it, but he insisted and said for me not to worry that another time he would give that waitress a big tip to compensate.
And that is what we did.
I felt like some street urchin stealing bread. It was so very stressful.
Afterwards he told me that I needed to learn how to relax. He explained that the world was always going to take from those that have the least. This was his way to take some of that back.
Philip was a character through and through. And I loved him dearly. There were so many characteristics that I so deeply admired. He went to Peru when he was young and went down the Amazon River in a dugout canoe with his guides at a time in the 1960’s when that area was very dangerous.
He told stories that during those three weeks in the sweltering heat, all they had to eat was rice and beans because in that humidity everything else would rot and they could carry that dried. He would describe that the guides would occasionally find partially eaten fruit that the monkeys had dropped, and they offered that up with meals. Philip politely refused.
He was a man that was notoriously difficult and infinitely generous.
He had a way about him that brought people together and made them laugh and smile. He loved living large and he loved all the crazy antics of his life.
He traveled extensively throughout his life putting himself in places that most sane people would never try. He started a Baby Gap, children’s clothing business just when Russia began to open up to western commerce and finagled his way into it because of a Russian friend who had … shall we say … connections with the right people.
He spoke fluent Russian and could call my father’s office and with a strong Russian accent, he would say, “May I please speak with Comrade Wagner!”
At which point, all hell would break loose and alarm bells would silently be pushed because of my father’s Top Secret Security clearance. By the time my father got to the phone (he knew who it had to be), he would calmly but with a tinge of irritation say, “Okay Philip, you have the CIA and the FBI now on the line! Are you satisfied? Tell them who you are before you get me in a lot of trouble!”
Philip was a cad and a rake.
And I loved him!
Honestly everyone loved him.
In fact, probably too many people actually loved him!
And I mean literally. His level of sexual appetite seemed unquenchable, and I am sure there are many men out there that could tell me stories about his sexual escapades that would make my hair stand on end and my face permanently blush.
And that is saying a lot because not much surprises me about human nature or human sexuality.
When I was younger and trying out my growing wings, he was the powerful wind that called to my soul to be brave and to just try to fly.
I wanted to be bold and confident like him.
In his younger years he was adorably cute, very stylish in his clothing, and carried a type of boyish charm that could charm the pants off of most men.
He was also a deeply spiritual seeker and explored many various nuances of religion and philosophy.
On one trip to Egypt, he was in the temple of Abu Simbel. He planned his trip to be there on the day that was the pharaohs birthday (October 22), because the temple was situated in such a way that on that day and on the day that the pharaoh ascended the throne, the sun would come through the door and illuminate the temple corridor, shining light onto the three statues of the Pharaoh Ramses II, Ra (the god of the sun), and Ammon (the king of the gods). While there is a 4^th statue there. The sun does not illuminate it because it represents the god Ptah (the god of darkness). That statue has not seen the sun in over 3200 years.
During that special moment, he had a sudden revelation that he was actually the reincarnation of Ramses II!
Even in this lifetime, his birthdate was on October 21^st. But it would have been October 22^nd if he had been born in Egypt.
In that one moment, he saw that whole lifetime. All the good and bad deeds. It was so prophetic for him that he had replicas made out of marble of Tutankhamun’s Canopic Chest carved in Egypt with the stone mason masters there and had it sent to him in San Francisco.
It was so real looking that it ended up stuck in customs because the government believed they were real. They had to be tested to clear customs and that took 6 months.
From that point on, his home turned into a sort of small museum with extraordinary pieces of art that he collected from all his travels.
My joke to him was that if anyone was a reincarnation of an Egyptian Pharoah, it would have been him!
He acted as if all things belonged to him and should be his. He was fascinated by art and the mystical spiritual tools of transformation. Even becoming a Rosicrucian to master those sacred tools and traditions later in life after literally having a heart attack that should have killed him but he miraculously came back from the dead and being in a coma for weeks.
He donated the replica of Tutankhamun’s Canopic Chest and jars to the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose, CA on the condition that some of his ashes could be placed in one of the jars, while the other jars were for his lifelong mate, Jim, and their deeply loved dogs.
Of course, he got a $300,000.00 tax credit for that donation. He always had to work the angles and finagle with money.
So, if you go to the Rosicrucian Museum, you will see my wildly exotic uncle there at the museum.
He is in his perfect place.
People still come to see him and marvel at those things that he found most special. He loved people in life, and he continues to have an audience even in death.
While I miss him greatly, I know that towards the end of this life … things were tough. He did not do well with his body failing and the death of his love, Jim.
Fortunately, Philip died 3 weeks after Jim.
He is a very unique character straight out of the most classic of fairy tales. I will never forget him, and I will forever love him even though he could tax the patience of any saint at times
Lifelong addiction is not pretty to watch as one ages. And while his life was incredibly full and magnificent, I am sure he is happy to be free of a body that was breaking down on him.
So, Philip. Here is to you. I hope you find my story of you fitting and feel proud of what you have accomplished and what you gave me.
I celebrate your personality and your love of life.
I celebrate your generosity that was so giving to those in need.
I still hear your laughter and see your smiling face as I have your favorite pictures up in my office from when you were on your many adventures.
I look at them every day and smile.
I realize that many of my personal journeys around the world have been inspired by your stories and because of you, I now have many of my own to tell.
May you rest in peace from this wildly sexual life and may you be remembered for all the good that you have done and all the love that you shared with a quick smile, your penetrating wit, and your personality that never believed the impossible was not possible.
I look forward to hanging out with your irreverently powerful self before too long.
But I know that you are watching and smiling as I am writing about you.
I am a better person because you showed me that one can be wild and kind. One can be powerful and generous. One can be a spiritual seeker but not a dogmatic follower.
Thank you for all the amazing times we shared.
Now, to celebrate your memory, I am going to play the Ride of the Valkyries on my phone and remember our amazing trip down the rapids of the C0l0rado River.

~Suzanne Wagner~