Originally published at National Catholic Register
Michael Wagner and his pregnant wife, Joanne, were traveling to the March for Life in Washington in 1976 when she — and their unborn baby — died unexpectedly, leaving him to raise their 12 other children alone.
Though devastated by the loss, Michael, a quiet man of faith, soldiered on and returned home to Erie, Pennsylvania, to deal with the reality of caring for nine boys and three girls between the ages of 3 and 17. He would work the third shift at a local die-casting shop so that he could be home during the day, cooking meals that often required peeling 20 pounds of potatoes and keeping up with laundry that had to be hung on a line outside absent an automatic drier.
To his youngest daughter, Stephanie (Wagner) Schlueter, who was 5 at the time, it seemed as if her father never slept. Yet, she said, she never remembered him being angry or self-pitying. “He may have had his moments in the quiet, once the door was closed, but he just exemplified true faith and trust in the Lord and lived out the words, ‘Whatever God calls you to, he provides for.’”
Years later, those
