Celebrating the Future with Strong Ties to the Past

When they first met, Robert and Patricia Wagner were 17 and 15 years old. “When Bob got through teasing me, we determined that we liked each other enough to start dating,” says Pat. They got to know one another on dates in the Hamilton area of Baltimore City near their local church, St. Luke’s Lutheran. Bob graduated from Baltimore Polytechnic Institute in 1961, and Pat graduated from Eastern High School which was located behind the old Memorial Stadium.

The couple was married in 1962, before Bob enlisted in the Navy as a Yeoman. The Wagners moved back to Maryland after his enlistment ended. He subsequently went to work for the Edgewood Arsenal and worked on developing protective masks currently in use by US forces all over the world. Pat stayed at home to raise their family. In 1980, she graduated with honors from nursing school and worked for over 20 years – the majority of which was spent caring for trauma patients. The couple stayed local until 2004 when they bought a second home in Bethany Beach. They remain active in their church, and are enjoying their retirement with visits from family and plenty of golf, as their shore home sits right on the 9th hole of a local course.

Members of the Elizabeth Duncan Yaggy Society, the Wagners formed a close relationship with GBMC after Mr. Wagner’s father, Philip C. Wagner, became a patient of Dr. Marshall Levine. According to Bob, “If it weren’t for Dr. Levine, my father would not have lived as long as he did.” Philip Wagner, a former resident of Oak Crest Village, lived for another five years after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

The Wagners have decided to perpetuate Philip Wagner’s memory by naming GBMC as the remainder beneficiary of a Charitable Remainder Unitrust. A charitable estate planning gift, the Trust will be used for the Clinical Research of Dr. Levine in the specialties of head and neck cancer and lymphoma. Pat said Dr. Levine made their decision to give an easy one, “In all my years of nursing, I never met a doctor as caring, sympathetic, perceptive, knowledgeable, dedicated and willing to spend as much time as a patient needed, than Dr. Marshall Levine.”

GBMC Foundation
6701 North Charles Street
Baltimore,MD 21204
443-849-3303 | Fax: 443-849-3739
E-Mail: JJeppi@GBMC.org