In Memoriam: Tim Wagner
The Free Press and the wider community are mourning the loss of Tim Wagner, who left us unexpectedly on October 19, 2026 to move toward Nirvana. It’s difficult to imagine life without Tim Wagner in it – he was a driving force behind many social justice activities, a spiritual comrade and very good friend of the Columbus Free Press. The prayer ceremony on Zoom by the local Buddhist Center, Columbus Karma Thegsum Chöling (KTC), drew over 50 people last night.
Tim served in the US Navy during the Vietnam war and saw a lot of the world. Back in Columbus, Ohio, he worked with a multitude of environmental and progressive organizations and issues such as the Short North’s Martha Walker Garden Club, Citizens for a Better Spring-Sandusky, visited Copapayo with the El Salvador Sister City Project and was instrumental in several successful movements to keep us safe from ecological disasters: shutting down the Southside trash burning power plant, Central Ohio Green Education Fund’s campaign against the "Mobile Chernobyl,” stopping the radioactive waste storage at Battelle and I’m sure there are many more. He served as director of the Short North Special Improvement District, was a dedicated Comfest volunteer, and faithfully cut the grass at the Buddhist Center up until a few days before he passed.
He was a nature lover, tech guy, accountant and sports fan. So many words could describe Tim -- smart, sweet, fastidious, multi-talented, fun, generous, loyal, spry, helpful, curious, tireless. He was the youngest 80-year-old I ever knew. Of course, we know Tim best as a Free Press volunteer. Tim spent an exhaustive amount of time proofreading during Free Press layout at our house in the 1990s. Tim was a perfectionist, meticulously improving everything from the aesthetics, punctuation, and grammar to the comprehension of articles.
In his own words: “Much of this activity took place the day, evening and night before going to the printer, so it turned into a marathon event, but always finishing before sunrise. In the earlier days, photos and cartoons needed to be physically cut out and pasted on the finished page. I had a particular compulsion for them to be straight and well aligned. My thinking was that the information in this publication was pretty unique to many readers, so let’s give it as much visual credibility as possible.”
When the Internet came along, Chuck Lynd taught him about website development. Tim was the reason we acquired the coveted freepress.org website address we continue to use today. He learned HTML and was the sole instigator for the Free Press going live as one of the first independent progressive newspaper to go online September 15, 1996. You can still get a look at these early pages at the Columbus Metropolitan Library’s database archive. We honored Tim with a Free Press “Libby” Award for Community Activism in 2000.
At his 80th birthday party this past year, love and respect for Tim overflowed from his family and community of friends. His contributions to the betterment of society included being vegan, being one of the first people I knew to own a Prius, and helping us figure out how to drain our dehumidifier in the basement. I can easily picture his smiling face (like a little Buddha) as we joked around, and wish it won’t just be a memory. He came to our last Second Saturday Salon held at the Buddhist Center -- smiling and laughing among friends, and that will have to be our good-bye to him.