MARYJO WAGNER | AUTOBIOGRAPHY | BIO | WOMAN SUFFRAGE | WRITER

MaryJo Wagner: Her Story

Music, Books, and Lots of Change

MaryJo reads and writes and blogs and listens to Bach. Loves the books of Willa Cather and the operas of Giuseppe Verdi — and almost any opera if it’s live from the Met on a big screen at her local movie theater.

She’s fond of dark chocolate and guacamole with lots of garlic but not at the same time. She loathes lima beans and potato salad with what she considers too much mayonnaise — that’s most potato salad. Her own potato salad is terrific but rarely eaten. She hates to cook.

Beginnings

MaryJo, a native Denverite, traces her roots back to the Gold Rush when her Wagner great-grandparents, Herman and Anna, traveled by wagon train in 1859 to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. They hoped to strike it rich in the gold fields. When that didn’t happen, Herman returned to his trade as a boot and saddle maker.

After Herman died, Anna and the children homesteaded in what is now west Denver. The original brick house, separated from Interstate 25 by a foreboding wall, is still occupied, but not by Wagners. MaryJo drives by the house occasionally to make sure it’s still standing.

The other side of her family was born in Red Cloud, Nebraska where Willa Cather was born. You can read about MaryJo, Willa, a great-aunt named Trix, a bunch of letters, and a conniving 2nd cousin right here on Medium.

Moving and School

MaryJo has lived in 8 states and 1 Canadian province. She’s back home now in Colorado where she belongs, with her husband Eric (whose last name is Alexander, not Wagner) and Rabbie (aka Rabbit Wagner) who’s one spoiled cat.

While moving about, MaryJo attended Colorado College, Ohio State University, University of Victoria (in British Columbia) Indiana University, and the University of Oregon. MaryJo loves to go to school!

Teaching, Editing, and Women’s Studies

She’s a retired college professor with a PhD in American History — which she only taught once as a part-time adjunct. MaryJo was one of the first to teach Women’s Studies (now called Gender Studies or some convoluted variation thereof), the founding editor of the National Women’s Studies Journal (now called Feminist Formations), and a founding member of the National Women’s Studies Association.

As the Director of the Women’s Studies Program at Portland State University and then Acting Director at the University of Oregon, MaryJo weathered feminist storms, begged social science deans for money for the programs, and taught Intro to Women’s Studies, Feminist Theory, and occasionally Women’s History (her favorite).

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that MaryJo had thrown herself into feminism in January 1972 when the first issue of Ms. magazine hit the newsstands. A copy of that first issue remains one of her prized possessions.

Recitals and Choir Practices

She plays the piano badly. I will skip over the details of the trauma experienced during her piano recitals. This agony had been thrust upon her by a cruel piano teacher. Once upon a time, as a member of the choir of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, she sang the Bach B-Minor Mass in Latin with organ, harpsichord, and chamber orchestra. Such a feat required many tedious hours of choir practice. She hasn’t sung in a choir since. It’s all downhill after the Bach B-Minor.

Family

MaryJo has four families. Wagners and Mizers raised her. She was adopted from the Colorado State Home for Dependent and Neglected Children at 3 months. She’s had reunions with her birth-mother and birth-father’s families: the Vespers and the Halls, also Colorado families.

Her birth-father, John Derrick Halls, jumped from a parachute into Normandy, France and died several hours later from Nazi gunfire on D-Day, June 6, 1944. He’s buried in France in the American Cemetery at Colleville sur Mer overlooking Omaha Beach. You can read his story

Between them, Eric and MaryJo have 4 kids (having lost two sons), 7 grandkids and two great-grands. The oldest grand is 25; 3 grands are in college. The youngest great-grand is a most adorable and captivating 3-year-old.

Leaving Academe

After forced retirement from Ohio State University, she returned to Colorado. MaryJo had been in the Women’s Studies Program, not the History Department. Faculty in programs could not become permanent faculty, much less tenured so she was out of job.

Unable to get another job because she’d never taught in a history department and women’s studies programs lacked the stature of a department, she moved grief-stricken but forward out of academe.

Back in home in Colorado

MaryJo moved back to Denver in time to celebrate 100 years of Woman Suffrage in Colorado. In 1893, Colorado was the first state to grant women’s suffrage. (No! Wyoming was NOT the first state, even though Wyoming feminists will tell it was. Wyoming was a mere territory when women first voted in 1869)

Wearing a costume vaguely resembling what a suffragist might have worn, MaryJo made herself a banner, and marched in a grand parade. Dressed in her suffragist costume, she spent months giving talks to various women’s groups and Rotary Clubs.

She was having so much fun, she made more costumes — one representing her great-grandmother Anna and a couple other pioneer women including Josie Basset, a Colorado cattle rustler. Wrote stories for them and drove around Colorado and Wyoming presenting one-woman shows featuring pioneer women. (Did I mention that her PhD dissertation featured pioneer women of Colorado, Nebraska, and Kansas?)

Along the way, MaryJo needed to earn a living: did free lance editing for Indiana University Press, taught classes for women returning to school after years as homemakers or in dead-end jobs, typed what she heard as a medical transcriptionist, greeted patients as a receptionist for a gastroenterologist, and entered names and information into a medical database. Before normal people were out of bed, she and Eric delivered Denver’s now deceased newspaper, The Rocky Mountain News.

A New Career

Finding the drudgery of mind-numbing, for-wages work depressing and tired of minimal pay, MaryJo immersed herself in learning everything she could about ADHD (after being diagnosed with it — surely you’re not surprised?). She turned knowledge into a business, helping teachers and parents work with kids with ADHD. Along the way she became certified in Brain Gym which helps ADHD kids learn faster and tames distraction.

And in her spare time, working for an educational publisher, she wrote daily blog posts, weekly newsletters, and ebooks. As a ghost writer, she even wrote a novel.

By now she and Eric had moved to Marble, Colorado, high up in the Rockies at 8,000 feet with bears, deer, chipmunks, lots of snow, and an almost 14,000 foot mountain to look at from the window in front of her desk. Ahh . . .

Eventually, sigh, back in Denver, MaryJo retreated from work to beat breast cancer. After the removal of both breasts and undergoing chemotherapy, she spent vast amounts of time lying on the guest bed in her office listening to Bach and reading: all the novels of Willa Cather, the books of Marilyn Robinson, and new biographies of J. S. Bach and John Adams.

After recovering, she threw herself into the training for certification as a life coach, focusing on women’s issues, ADHD, and adoption.

She’s writes stories on Illumination and is working on two books at the same time: “Finding My Hero: An Adoption Memoir from World War Two” and “Growing Up Adopted: Love Wounded.” She also has a book of stories soon to be published, “Oh Look . . . . There’s a Squirrel and Other Stories.

She’s honored to write for Illumination. And thanks Dr. Mehmet Yildiz for accepting her in to the publication and his publication, Illumination-Curated.

P.S. Only a woman with ADHD would think writing two books at the same time is a good idea! And she’s got a couple more in mind.