NOTE TO READER: As you read this sensitive and caring article from the Sunday Sentinel, remember that the Sentinel barely reported the 37 homeless deaths a year ago (our count was 43). Nor is there any mention of whether Wagner had a blanket at the time he died. Use of such a blanket is illegal under MC 6.36.010 section B. The article does not mention whether Wagner had availed himself of the emergency shelter services of the ISSP program. The ISSP does not accept inebriated individuals. The city's Homeless Issues Task Force of 2001 issued a recommendation calling for a "wet" shelter where those currently suffering from substance addiction can find shelter. That recommendation, along with 26 others, was dumped by the Santa Cruz City Council. The council currently refuses to place reform of the Sleeping Ban and Blanket Ban on the city council agenda despite major lobbying by advocacy groups to do so. --- Becky Johnson

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Robert Wagner, 58, died of exposure during cold spell
By TOM RAGAN
Sentinel staff writer

Robert Raymond Wagner, a father of three, a Vietnam veteran and a homeless artist who sold seashells on the streets of Santa Cruz, has died.

He was 58, a victim of last week’s cold weather and perhaps too much alcohol. His body was found on a park bench outside Santa Cruz City Hall on Nov. 28.

The good news, if there’s any in Wagner’s death, said his younger brother James, is that Wagner spent Thanksgiving weekend with his daughter, Tammy Marie, 31, before returning to the streets again, something he chose to do.

"He had turkey, dressing and pumpkin pie, and she spotted him 20 bucks," said James Wagner, 52, in a telephone interview from San Jose, where he’s a police officer. "He bought the Sunday newspaper, drank a bottle of brandy, laid down on the bench, and that was the last we heard of him."

Temperatures that night dipped below freezing. The cold weather, combined with excessive alcohol, led to the death, said Wagner, who cited a report from the Santa Cruz County Coroner’s office.

Born in Chicago and reared in Niles, Ill., a middle-class suburb, Wagner was married twice, had three children, and lived in San Jose, Hollister and Los Gatos for about two decades.

It wasn’t until his second divorce seven years ago that he took to the streets of Santa Cruz, his brother said.

Most fascinating, perhaps, about his brother was his uncanny ability to sketch caricatures from memory, creating virtual carbon copies of his subjects in a matter of seconds.

"He had more talent in his little finger than I had in my whole body, but he could never get anything going," his brother said. "He was into the drinking pretty heavy, and everybody tried to help him, but it never worked out."

Wagner was also afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder from serving in Vietnam for three years, his brother said.

Though he attended a Catholic high school in his Illinois hometown, he never graduated. Instead, he opted to fight for his country in the U.S. Navy, joining up for six years as a reservist and serving three of them on active duty.

Wagner was a technician aboard the USS Kittyhawk from 1969 to 1971. Though he was never a fighter pilot, he had friends who were; and when they never returned from bombing missions, it had a profound affect on his psyche, his brother said.

"I think it tore him up, seeing his friends leave on airplanes and never come back," his brother said. "I mean, these were guys he used to play poker with and eat and drink and dine with, and I think that’s when it all started to fall apart."

But there was a time when his brother was "a real gentleman, a guy who’d make women look twice, a real high roller who thought he was James Bond," he said.

"You never would have believed that he had cashmere coats, three-piece suits and Florsheim shoes before he went off to Vietnam," he added. "I’d like to think of him that way and remember him like instead of how he actually died."

He is survived by children Tammie Marie Wagner of Santa Cruz, Pamela Golnick of Carpentersville, Ill., and Robert Wagner Jr. of Oregon; brothers James Wagner of San Jose and Richard Wagner of Washington state; twin sisters Denise Parks of San Jose and Debra Woodward of Rocklin, and sister Cheryl Venturella of Missouri; and two great grandchildren.

Services will be private.

Contributions are preferred in Robert Wagner’s name to the Vietnam War Memorial, 900 Ohio Dr., S.W., Washington, D.C., 20024.

Contact Tom Ragan at tragan@santacruzsentinel.com.