When Caroline Wagner died in February, there was an outpouring of grief and sympathy that surprised even me, her husband of more than forty-eight years—phone calls, e-mails, and cards from Canada, Taiwan, Thailand, England, Indonesia, and Brazil, and from former international students still living in the U.S.
“…I can assure you that she's still with us (in our hearts). I will always remember her thoughtfulness for me and my family, her sweet talk and her uplifting voice talks and speaks to us when we (as International students in the US) always feel that we are alone and "misplaced" there. You and Caroline with all your experience and ‘understanding’ of the values of Asian people made us feel at home and that we have someone to talk to who can understand our feelings and values.”
-- Dr. Erna Marie Lokolla (from Indonesia)
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“ I have known her for the last 15 years and as you all know she had such a strong soul and big heart she gave tenacity a new meaning. She was so very smart—and by this I believe you all know not only intellectually, but that she had deep emotional intelligence.
She sees me, sees the best in me. I could have some miniscule accomplishment and she would make me feel so good about it, so spectacular. She offered me a splendid combination of friendship and maternal encouragement and of course blessings and advice. When you weave love in one direction and integrity in the other, you have the strongest of fabrics—she was a master weaver.”
-- Dr. Naseer Malik (Former Pakistani student)
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I shed many tears when I learned of the passing of Caroline. It was like I'd lost my close relative. And it's hard to fight back tears whenever I think of her. She will always be in my thoughts and prayers.
-- Honorable Dejviboon Panasethaned (From Thailand)
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It was excruciating to me to learn that Caroline has passed away. I made merit at the monastery of my brother and some other place for Caroline.
-- Dr. Tanate Srisirirojanakorn (from Thailand)
Caroline, in spite of walking on crutches after having polio at age three, and I traveled around the world seven times plus three times to England. We lived abroad, mostly in Asia, for eleven years.
Thais loved Caroline (we lived in Thailand for five years in the mid ‘60s) partly because she learned to speak the Thai language, partly because at 4’ 11” she was more their size, but also because her questions about their country, language, religion, culture, art, architecture, the monarchy, or any of the thousand other things in which she was always interested, indicated her genuine interest in learning about them.
I would love to talk about Caroline’s experiences white water rafting in the Philippines; walking on planks over canals in Bangkok; riding elephants to and then clambering over the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia; walking the planks of the Sydney, Australia opera house when it was being built; climbing up the magnificent temple of Borobudur in Indonesia; riding elephants in northern Thailand; looking for tigers on elephants in India; seeing the Ajanta caves (now a world heritage site), the Taj Mahal, Srinagar (after a 14 hour bus ride), and Katmandu; our experiences on the way to a conference in Minsk, Belarus (then part of the USSR) from India (through Kabul, Afghanistan, Samarkand [on the old silk route], Tashkent, Kiev, Moscow and St. Petersburg); but I fear space your patience would not permit.
Caroline served on the Cosmo Club Board and was a member of the International Hospitality Committee for several years. She agreed to participate in these organizations partly as a way of keeping in touch with the international students she so dearly loved and who loved her. The nearly 100-year-old motto of Cosmo is: “Above all Nations is Humanity.” Much of Caroline’s life was devoted to making this motto a meaningful concept. In the weeks before Caroline’s death, she was reading the Dalai Lama’s book The Art of Happiness.
