Life story: Camano Island’s Juanita Wagner was noted scientist and teacher

Juanita Wagner worked on the Manhattan Project that launched the nuclear era. She earned a doctorate in chemistry, and taught at Washington State University. She went to law school, and in the 1990s ran for the state Legislature.

All that, and she and her husband raised four children.

“She was a brilliant woman, absolutely extraordinary,” said Mary Trimble, who met her friend Juanita in a Camano Island writing class. “She was a very loyal and dear friend, a really neat lady.”

Juanita “Billy” Hubbard Wagner died at her Camano Island home Dec. 10. She was 89.

She is survived by her daughter Wilhemina Wagner; sons Christopher and Kelvin Wagner and daughter-in-law Gail Wagner; granddaughter Tia; and a niece, Joanne Jacka, and her family.

She was preceded in death by another daughter, Tina; by her parents, John Van der Veer Hubbard and Rose Dee Hubbard; and by her husband, Edward Lewis Wagner, who died in 1975.

Juanita was born May 26, 1920, in Nevada City, Calif. She earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley.

During World War II, she met Edward Wagner while working in California on the Manhattan Project, the government program aimed at developing nuclear weapons. That work later took them to Oak Ridge, Tenn.

After the war, they married and went to graduate school at Brown University in Providence, R.I., where Juanita earned her doctorate in chemistry. They raised their family in Pullman, where Edward Wagner taught chemistry at WSU and Juanita Wagner would later teach.

Daughter Wilhemina “Mina” Wagner said that in the early years at Washington State College, nepotism rules wouldn’t allow her mother to teach under the authority of the dean supervising Edward Wagner. Eventually, Mina Wagner said, her mother legally challenged the university. She worked at WSU beginning in 1963, and primarily taught mathematics.

When she wasn’t granted tenure, her daughter said, she changed her focus to law.

She earned a law degree from the University of Washington in the early 1980s, and worked for the federal Environmental Protection Agency. In the mid-1990s, she ran as a 10th District Democrat for the state House of Representatives. She also served on the state Medical Quality Assurance Commission, which screens medical complaints, and on the Camano Water Association Board.

“She was such a pleasant lady,” said Barry Sehlin, of Oak Harbor. Sehlin, the Republican who defeated Wagner in the 1994 House race, retired from the Legislature in 2005.

He recalls Wagner sharing rides to campaign debates. “She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, but always in a pleasant, professional way,” Sehlin said. “She was clearly a very bright lady, and fun to be around. My wife enjoyed having her along. It made for a very pleasant campaign season.”

Mina Wagner described her parents as “old-time labor movement lefties.”

Among Mina Wagner’s childhood memories are her mother’s lessons in “kitchen chemistry.”

When dishing out ice cream, Juanita Wagner not only made sure the scoops were equal, “she would weigh the bowls to see if there was a difference.” And when her mother was expecting her younger brother, Mina Wagner said she asked something like, “Does the new baby come out of mommy’s tummy?” Her mother answered by showing her a diagram illustrating cell division.

Juanita’s upbringing in rural California, where her father worked as a mining engineer and had a pear orchard, gave her a lifelong love of nature, her daughter said.

While in Pullman, the family spent summers on Priest Lake, Idaho, where some WSU faculty members bought parcels from an old homestead.

At Priest Lake, Mina Wagner said, her mother sailed and went canoeing. “She stood up straight, and breathed and strode up those hills at Priest Lake. I’d be trailing behind,” she said.

Trimble, Wagner’s Whidbey Island friend, recalled that in her late 70s Wagner spent a long day helping her plant trees. “She was trudging away the whole time,” Trimble said.

Both were interested in travel, and Trimble enjoyed Wagner’s stories from a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Wagner so loved being outside, Trimble said, that she often slept on a cot in her gazebo.

“She was really a character,” said Trimble, “one of those once-in-a-lifetime people.”