Carthage College Athletics

Eugene C. “Gene” Wagner, a native of Davenport, Iowa, enrolled at Carthage College in 1927.  He lettered four times in football (1927-30), four times in basketball (1928-31) and three times in track and field (1929-31) for the Red Men.  Wagner graduated in 1931 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and took a teaching job in the Anna-Jonesboro School district south of Carthage and 20 miles north of Cairo, Ill.
 
In 1934, Wagner entered the University of Iowa Medical School in 1934 and graduated in 1938.  He then interned St. John’s Hospital in Yonkers, N.Y.
 
Wagner married Caroline Van Meter on Oct. 27, 1940 in Moline, Ill., Van Meter’s home town.  After his Yonkers residency, Wagner got a job with the infectious disease section of the Iowa Department of Public Health in Des Moines, Iowa.
 
Wagner served in the U.S. Army as a physician during World War II.  He trained at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C., and served at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, as well as South Pacific assignments in New Guinea, Guam and the Philippines.  After he was discharged in 1946, Wagner and his family moved to Plainfield, Iowa, where he took over a deceased-doctor’s rural practice. 

The Wagners moved to Albuquerque, N.M., in 1968, and Caroline died from pancreatic cancer in 1970.  Gene died from a heart attack in 1973.

Wagner and his older brother, Herbert “Hub” Wagner, were charter inductees into the Carthage Athletic Hall of Fame in 1984, while his oldest brother, Ehrhardt, was inducted in 1986.