Hometown: San Antonio, TX
Branch: U.S. Army
Unit: Office of the Army Surgeon General and Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, the Pentagon
Military Honors: Purple Heart
Date of Sacrifice: September 11, 2001 - the Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia 
Age: 40
Conflict: War in Afghanistan, 2001-2021

Karen Wagner was a fourth-generation soldier.

She grew up in a military family, which meant frequent moves. Her father, SGT Bill Wagner, was an Army surgical nurse who served in France during World War II and later in Korea.

Her mother, Mattie, managed the family during Bill’s many deployments. As with many military families, the term “hometown” is a concept that is difficult to apply. Karen’s older sister, Kim, was born at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Next came a brother, Warren, born at Fort Lewis in Tacoma, Washington. Karen and her younger brother Karl were born at Fort Riley Army Base near Manhattan, Kansas.

As a young girl, everyone at Fort Riley knew Karen as “Peanut”—a nickname given to her by a platoon sergeant who was a friend of her dad. According to Texas Monthly:

The Wagners lived in Junction City, Kansas, filling a three-bedroom house surrounded by other military families. Everyone Karen knew was of that world. Her babysitters were Army wives and Army brat teenagers. Her doctor and dentist visits were always at the base clinic, not far from the hospital where she had been born. When her mom, Mattie, couldn’t go to the store, a friend would take her grocery list to the PX [Post Exchange, a retail store on Army bases]. The highlight of Karen’s earliest Christmases was a pageant at an auditorium at Fort Riley. And when the soldiers left for tours in Vietnam, families would often move in together to share bills and to give moral support.

Her mother recalls that at age four, Karen practiced marching and saluting—and declared that she’d follow in her father’s footsteps and enlist in the Army. Although her mother discouraged the idea, she later knew that Karen was serious when she joined the Army Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) in high school.

When Karen was seven years old, the family moved to San Antonio, Texas, when Bill was transferred to Fort Sam Houston. He served there a few years until his retirement from the Army, and the family moved to nearby Converse, Texas—where Bill took a job as a nurse at a local hospital and the children attended school.

Teammates remember Karen Wagner as the best player on their Judson High School team. With Wagner on the team, the Rockets would win four straight district championships.

As a high school freshman, Wagner became fast friends with sophomore Karen Rankin. The two played basketball and ran track together, and both participated in the ROTC program.

Rankin told a San Antonio Express-News reporter that later in life, as the two lived in different parts of the country and would go some time between phone calls, Rankin knew how to get Wagner’s attention. She’d send Wagner a pack of green Kool-Aid in an envelope with no return address. “Within days, her [Rankin’s] phone would ring. Wagner would be on the other end, chuckling about the message only they understood.”

Wagner continued her athletic career after high school, playing guard for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She graduated from the university in 1984 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. She’d later earn a master’s degree in health services administration from Webster University.

At age 23, Wagner enlisted in the United States Army in February 1984, with an ROTC appointment. That same year, she married George Hardison on Valentine’s Day. The two met at the rec center at San Angelo’s Goodfellow Air Force Base four years earlier.

Wagner completed her basis training at Fort Sam Houston, followed by technical training at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indianapolis, Indiana.

On her 26th birthday in 1987, Wagner gave birth to a daughter, Saundra. Their little girl was born with hydrocephalus and spina bifida. She was blind, and she had to be fed through a tube. The Army doctors warned Karen and George that Saundra wouldn’t live long.

Karen told her sister, Kim, “This is my baby, and she needs me to care for her…That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to lean into this and trust the grace of God.”

Despite having access to the best Army hospital services, the Wagners lost Saundra two months after her first birthday.

By the mid-1990s, Wagner was assigned to Fort Sam Houston, working at the inspector general’s office. In 1997, she was transferred to Walter Reed, the Army’s flagship hospital, where she was promoted to brigade executive officer and deputy brigade commander.

Texas Monthly describes her heavy responsibilities: “She had to manage the brigade staff, as well as the day-to-day health, welfare, and discipline of every one of the 2,600 soldiers at Walter Reed.”

Wagner’s leadership and competence were noticed by the Army, and she was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in August 2001. She was moving into second-floor office on the west side of The Pentagon, after being assigned as medical personnel officer for the Army Surgeon General and Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel.

A month later, on the morning of September 11, 2001, LTC Wagner was hard at work at her desk when news came about two commercial airliners flying into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.

As the realization hit that this was no accident but an act of war, she joined with some 20 other officers around a television to watch the news unfold. Coming to grips with what was happening, LTC Wagner said, “Okay, let’s get back to work,” as she turned and walked down the hallway to her desk.

Another commercial airliner had been hijacked by radical Islamic terrorists. Moments after LTC Wagner returned to her desk, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into The Pentagon’s western façade. Writer John Spong describes that moment in Texas Monthly:

American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the building on the first floor, buckling the concrete floor of the second as it barreled underneath [LTC Wagner] like a freight train. In an instant, she and the others at their desks were thrown across the room. Everything came crashing down—cabinets, bookshelves, wall lockers, ceiling tiles, overhead lighting—and the windowless office went absolutely black. Before any of the living had a chance to get their bearings, the jet fuel exploded about four feet from Karen’s cubicle. The room temperature soared from 75 degrees to 1,700 as a fireball engulfed the office, leaving behind a toxic black cloud.

Miraculously, LTC Wagner survived the initial crash and explosion long enough to tell others that she was going to look for a way out. But moments later, she succumbed to heat and thick black smoke.

The attack that day launched a two-decade Global War on Terror, including military action in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In New York City, 2,753 American lives were lost at the World Trade Center. One terrorist attack was thwarted when passengers charged the hijackers aboard United Airlines flight 93, crashing the plane into a Pennsylvania field instead of its intended (unknown) target. 40 passengers and crew members were lost.

The explosion at The Pentagon claimed 184 American lives, including LTC Wagner, at age 40.

LTC Karen J. Wagner was posthumously awarded the Legion of Merit, the Order of Military Medical Merit, and the Purple Heart Medal. She was buried with full military honors at the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio.

The Wagner Sports Center at Walter Reed Army Medical center in Washington, DC, and Wagner High School in San Antonio are named in her honor.

Sources
9/11 Pentagon Memorial Heroes: LTC Karen J. Wagner, USA
San Antonio Express-News, Sep. 24, 2001: Hope ends for kin in Alamo City
Bryan-College Station Eagle, Oct. 7, 2001: A Soldier’s Honor
Keesler Air Force Base: Fallen Warrior: Lt. Col. Karen Wagner
Texas Monthly: Karen Wagner’s Life
VA News: #VeteranOfTheDay Army Veteran Karen Wagner
LTC Karen J. Wagner VFW Post 12119 – Las Vegas, NV: Karen J. Wagner
U.S. Army ROTC: Karen Wagner High School: Thunderbirds Pay Tribute to Lt. Col. Karen Wagner
San Antonio Express-News, Feb. 23, 2008: Converse act honors local Sept. 11 victim
San Antonio Express-News, May 3, 2011: For families, they relive 9/11’s agony
Burial Site: Find a Grave