Wagner knows to "Keep the customers happy"

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Wagner knows to "Keep the customers happy"

By S.K. Bardwell
Posted Monday, August 4, 2008

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Brazoria County Sheriff Charles Wagner and his wife Margaret. Photo courtesy of the Wagner family.

It was a Marshall who sparked the sheriff’s career

A powerful force started Charles Wagner on a career in law enforcement in 1966—a powerful force named Jack Marshall.

Many knew Marshall as a Brazoria County deputy from 1938 to 1946, and the sheriff from 1946 through 1965, with a brief gap in the late fifties. Wagner knew him as a family friend and a mentor.

Wagner and his grandson Trace Thompson, age 4, at the Brazoria County Fair. Photo courtesy of the Wagner family.

“He and my mother (Vivian Broaddus Wagner) grew up together,” Wagner said. “He was elected sheriff the year I was born. When I was little-bitty he would visit in our home, and he started on me then. When I graduated (Brazosport) high school, he came over and asked me when I was going to run for sheriff.”

Wagner had other ideas, and went off to Texas Lutheran University. He was 20 and home for the summer break when his father, Sidley H. Wagner, died of a heart attack, and everything changed.

The Wagner family was no stranger to law enforcement, Wagner said: His grandfather had been a lawman in Lavaca County and his father was a part-time deputy under Sheriff Marshall, as well as a part-time constable.

“But my dad was a butcher by trade, and the meat market and grocery store was what kept the family running. His death crimped our finances, and I didn’t go back to school. I went and applied for a job with the Freeport police, and they called the next day and said come on down and start.” Wagner began his law enforcement career as a Freeport patrol officer Aug. 11, 1967.

Eleven days later, on his 21st birthday, he was allowed to carry a gun.

Like every other aspect of law enforcement, Marshall has words of wisdom about patrolling, and about being armed: “He’d say, ‘Courtesy is the best and most effective weapon you have,’” Wagner recalls.

Wagner served in his hometown for 18 years, rising through the ranks from patrol officer to patrol sergeant, detective sergeant, detective lieutenant and chief of detectives.

On July 15, 1985, Wagner became Chief Deputy under Sheriff Joe King. Fifteen years later, in January 2005, he was sworn in as sheriff—only the fourth the county has had in his lifetime. “I don’t want to be the last,” he jokes.

The forty-plus years Wagner has spent in law enforcement have not been spent only in law enforcement, naturally. He and his wife Margaret have been married for 36 years, and have four children and five grandchildren, who have kept the couple involved in schools, sports and the arts, as well as in their church, where both have been high school religious education teachers and taught Christian parenting classes and sponsored engaged couples.

Wagner gives to the community through a life membership in the Texas PTA and the Brazoria County Fair Association, and serves on the boards of the Children’s Foundation of Brazoria County, BISD Drug Council, and Brazosport College Law Enforcement Advisory Board, as well as serving on the Sheriff’s Association of Texas Legislative Committee and the SAT’s Texas Commission of Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Education Committee.

Wagner is currently running for his second term as sheriff. Throughout his long law enforcement career, Marshall’s many pieces of advice have stayed with him, to guide him and help him and make him smile—things like, “the straps on the shoulders of your uniform aren’t there to support chips.”

Wagner and family at a August 12, 2007 fundraiser and anniversary party. Photo courtesy of the Wagner family.

In fact, Marshall’s words on courtesy—a lesson also learned in his father’s grocery—were in Wagner’s mind when he was elected sheriff. “When I took office, that’s what I told my people,” Wagner said: “Keep the customers happy.”