Lakewood Ranch centenarian to turn 105 on July 25; wife turned 100 this year, too

LAKEWOOD RANCH – Jack Wagner will turn 105 on Monday, July 25, while Leona, his wife of 36 years, recently turned 100.

The two centenarians live in The Sheridan at Lakewood Ranch but met in Palm-Aire, after Jack ultimately retired there in 1985, after a long career that included working in an engine parts factory during World War II; the family business, the Federal Lithograph Company; and as a paper salesman in the Midwest.

Leona, who spent 34 years working as an assistant for five Chicago mayors – including both Richard J. Daley and his son Richard M. Daley, as well as Jane Byrne, the first woman to be elected mayor of a major city in the United States – wasn’t looking to get married when they met.

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Neither was Jack, but eventually love won and the couple moved to The Sheridan about three years ago.

“I was over 100 and I was trying to keep the house and drive my car and do the cooking and the shopping,” Jack said. “I just didn’t have the energy.”

Jack still manages his finances online, frequents Amazon for online purchases, and works out in a small gym at The Sheridan.

On a recent Wednesday afternoon, Jack boasted about how Leona – Lee, for short – the youngest of 10 children, worked her way up in the mayor’s office.

Three of Lee’s brothers became Catholic priests, two became doctors and two went into politics. Her sister became a nurse.

Lee was in her second year at DePaul University, when she had to take time off to care for her mother.

“Everyone in her family got a college education, which was very rare,” Jack said.

One of her brothers in politics urged her to work in the mayor’s office. Originally she was hired on a temporary basis, answering phones, but her responsibilities grew.

“She was so efficient that they wouldn’t let her go,” Jack said.

Lee countered that “some of the girls were married and had children and other responsibilities.”

Wisdom from the Great Depression

Jack Wagner was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. The family moved to Chicago, then New Rochelle, New York, and eventually Detroit, Michigan, when he was in fourth grade.

That’s where the family was when the 1929 stock market crash hit, followed by the Great Depression.

In 1932, his dad, Elmer F. Wagner, who was in the printing business, bought a home in Grosse Pointe once valued at $28,000 from a bank executive for only $13,500.

In that way Jack and his older brother Elmer A. Wagner learned a valuable lesson from their father.

“He said, 'If you save money, then you can name your price,'” Jack said. “I knew the best thing to do is to save your money – don’t try to keep up with the Joneses, live within your means.”

Henry Ford II was in Jack’s class at Grosse Pointe High School, but Jack said he got to know the younger brother, Benson Ford, better – and later in life both were members of the Bayview Yacht Club in Detroit..

Jack was 24 and working in advertising when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. He went job hunting and was hired at NA Woodworth Company in Ferndale, Michigan, which was building parts used in radial engines both for aircraft and tanks.

There were 238 people at the company when he started, and within a year-and-a-half the company grew to more than 5,000 people.

“A really big organization and I got a great education there, believe me,” Jack said “I worked 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, for four years.

“I was so worn out, it would take me half a day to read a newspaper,” he added “I was so tired out I could hardly move.”

After the war, he went into sales for a subsidiary of NA Woodworth, selling gauges, but the market was too saturated in his territory of Wisconsin and Michigan.

Eventually his father called and said there was an opening for an office manager at the family business, Federal Lithograph Company, in Detroit.

It was one of five big lithograph companies in the city. He worked for the company for 12 years, until his father sold the company. Both his father and older brother moved to Sarasota and established the Sarasota Printing and Lithograph Company.

Jack worked on getting a job for a paper company in the Midwest and eventually was hired on by the Champion Paper Company in Chicago and worked for a childhood friend from Erie.

On one of Jack’s visits to his family in Sarasota, they set him up with Shirley Johnson, who would become his first wife in 1947.

They married, had two boys and moved to Peoria, Illinois.

He eventually moved on to the Forest-Atwood Paper Company in Elk Grove, Illinois.

A passion for sailing

When he worked at NA Woodworth, Jack became friendly with one of the executives, joined the Bay View Yacht Club and bought his first sailboat, but it was too slow.

He developed a passion for sailing and raced in 33 Chicago and Port Huron Mackinac races.

The highlight of his career was being part of a crew that won the overall cruising class of the 1962 Bayview-Mackinac race.

“I loved that sport better than any other sport I’ve been in,” said Jack, who also played golf and tennis.

He also developed an affinity for creating wooden model ships.

One model of the HMS Victory, he donated to the St. Petersburg Yacht Club.

Another, of the USS Confederacy – a Revolutionary War era Frigate – he displays in a case in the recreation room at The Sheridan.

Sailing is still a passion.

Shortly after Jack and Lee married, they went to Michigan for the 50-year class reunion for Grosse Pointe High School.

The celebration was hosted at the Bayview Yacht Club.

When Lee hadn’t returned from a trip to the ladies room, Jack went to find his wife.

Lee, 63 at the time, was surrounded by five young men.

“They had just won the Canada Cup, they raced sailboats,” Jack said.

The champion sailors had the cup with them, filled with Stingers – a cocktail made of creme de menthe and brandy – urging people to dip a glass in the cup for a drink.

“I was teaching them the songs that we sang,” Lee said. “Sing for me a sweet melody called doodle-e-doo, doodle-e-doo.”

Earle Kimel primarily covers south Sarasota County for the Herald-Tribune and can be reached at earle.kimel@heraldtribune.com. Support local journalism with a digital subscription to the Herald-Tribune.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Lakewood Ranch man turns 105, his bride is 100