‘It’s totally what I do’

Six days a week JoAnn Wagner is on the job by 7 a.m. She starts the coffee and prepares for another day of labor that won’t end until 4 p.m. And she doesn’t get paid for a single minute of it. Wagner, 67, is retired from her job as a cook and now devotes herself to volunteer work. Most of the time she works on Habitat for Humanity job sites, hammering nails into new homes. When the weather turns cold, she heads south on a mission trip to locations including Mexico, Guatemala and Panama.

“It’s totally what I do,” she said. “Twelve months out of the year I volunteer.”

“She’s wonderful,” said Habitat construction supervisor Bill McMillan, who has worked with Wagner for seven years. “She’s always got a positive attitude and is willing to do anything to help.”

Most recently Wagner has been helping build three duplexes on Boone Avenue near Stevens Elementary. McMillan knows he can count on Wagner as one of his regular volunteers who always come to do what they can. “They’re pretty hardy folks,” he said. “We work year-round regardless of the weather.”

Wagner first started volunteering with Habitat 12 years ago. She had always been handy with a hammer and had helped her brother build two homes. “I like the Christian fellowship that’s on this job,” she said. “It’s only through God that I’m out here doing this. I believe this is my ministry.”

Building homes is something tangible that she can point to as an accomplishment.

“Ten years from now I can drive by and say I helped. I really do it because I’m helping someone right now to take a step forward and live in decent housing. I’m benefiting a child’s life.”

The children that live in the homes she helped build are the only children she’s responsible for now. When she was 21 she was in a car accident that claimed her mother, grandmother, aunt and son. She was the only survivor. That same year her husband was also killed in a car accident. She had previously lost two sons to illness.

Wagner was angry and bitter for years, but now she shrugs off her pain, saying that her sorrow is what made her the person she is today. “That’s all right. Now look at all the kids I’ve got,” she said, gesturing to the men working on the Habitat home.

She later married Richard Wagner. Sadness would visit her again when she was diagnosed with lung cancer soon before her husband was diagnosed with colon cancer. She beat her cancer; he didn’t. He died in 1994 after 17 years of marriage.

She threw herself into volunteer work. Since she finds it hard to cope with cold weather, she plans to leave for Mexico this week on yet another mission trip. She’s gone there every winter for the last nine years. She helped build a church and this year will help remodel a bathroom in an old-age home. Next year she already has plans to travel to Panama and teach home maintenance classes. “I’m very excited about that,” she said.

Wagner knows she will end up where she is needed.

“A door will open for me, and that’s where I’ll go,” she said.

She’s quick to point out the people who help her live her life of volunteerism. She lives with her sister and brother-in-law in Spokane Valley. Her sister often comes along on her annual mission trips. “They totally support me in everything I do.”

She’s also grateful to members of her church, Redeemer Lutheran, who regularly raise money to pay for her winter mission trips. “It’s a very precious church to me.”

She showed that gratitude to her church when the congregation recently remodeled the building. Wagner was right there with her hammer.

“I was tearing the walls down,” she said. “It was kind of fun.”

Wagner said she has no plans to retire from her volunteer work. In fact, she has a saying she repeats to anyone who asks that question. “I will build houses on Earth, dear God, until you get my home complete in heaven.”