Almarie Wagner Collection

Almarie Wagner, an administrator for education, health, and art-related organizations in the Chicago area for over forty years, is currently an independent consultant for non-profit executives and Boards of Directors for organizations such as the American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Alzheimer’s Association, and Lincoln Park Conservancy. 

Wagner currently serves as Vice-Chair of the Hyde Park Jazz Society Board of Directors. The society was founded by her husband, James W. Wagner, who passed away in January 2009. James W. Wagner also played a significant role in establishing the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, whose Board of Directors Almarie serves as Treasurer for. 
 

As a leader and activist in education, health care, and community service, Jim Wagner had more than 40 years of professional and management experience working in a wide range of business, educational, social service, and civic organizations.
After graduating from DuSable High School, he studied at Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Western Colorado University, where he earned undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees. His professional career ranged from serving as public school teacher, Education Director at the Chicago Urban League, President and CEO of the Mid-Southside Comprehensive Health Planning Organization, and 18 years as Assistant Professor and Associate Dean for Student and Alumni Affairs at the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  In addition, he served for more than 20 years on the Board of Directors of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, Texas, and New Mexico(Health Care Service Corporation).

Dr. Wagner also had a long history of involvement in countless civic projects and political movements.  He was an active participant and leader in the civil rights movement, marching with Dr. King and Jesse Jackson in Chicago, Selma, and Washington, D.C.  He protested discrimination against African Americans in barbershops and at lunch counters, and organized support for African American citizens in Tennessee who were fighting for their right to vote.  He worked tirelessly to improve education in Chicago’s public schools, starting with his efforts to remove the “Willis Wagons” in the 1960s as supplemental classrooms for segregated schools.  In 1963 he was Marshall of the Chicago Green Train in the historic march on Washington.

Dr. Wagner demonstrated his deep commitment to DuSable High School through his chairmanship of the DuSable Alumni Coalition and his service as founding chair of  the Mary Herrick Scholarship Fund, which has raised almost $400,000 in college scholarship funds for DuSable graduates since its founding in 1985.  In addition, he founded the Hyde Park Jazz Society in 2006, after many years of determined effort to “bring back jazz to Hyde Park and the South Side.” The Jazz Society ,through its almost 10 years of Sunday night jazz presentations, has had great influence in the current proliferation of live jazz throughout the South Side.  Wagner played a significant role in establishing the enormously successful Hyde Park Jazz Festival, which celebrates its 10 year anniversary in September 2016.  While he passed away in January 2009 after a valiant fight against lung cancer, his legacy of contributions to the community is profound.