Festus teacher wants to create memorial to honor father, other COVID-19 victims

Meagan Wagner-Westermayer is looking for a venue to display a Yellow Hearts Memorial and honor all the Jefferson Countians who have lost their lives to COVID-19, including her father, former County Circuit Clerk Howard Wagner, who died in December at age 74.

As of March 22, the county had a total of 229 COVID-19-related deaths, and Wagner was the 111th.

Wagner-Westermayer, a first-grade teacher at Festus Elementary, said the Yellow Heart Memorial was started in Texas by Rosie Davis to honor her mother and others who died from COVID-19. The memorial features yellow hearts with names and photos of those who died from the virus.

Since the memorial in Texas, others have gone up in California, New York, Pennsylvania and even Europe, Wagner-Westermayer said.

She said she wants to see a similar memorial in Jefferson County and is looking for a public space for the display but so far has had no luck finding one.

Wagner-Westermayer, 36, of Festus also is asking people to submit names and photos of loved ones they’ve lost to COVID-19 to display at the memorial once it’s established.

Right now, Wagner-Westermayer has her father’s name and the name of a neighbor’s loved one.

People may email suggestions for a location for the memorial, as well as family members’ names and photos to be included in the memorial to yellowheartjeffco@gmail.com.

Howard Wagner graduated from De Soto High School in 1964, and he lived in De Soto before his death. He was a Vietnam War veteran and spent more than three decades in Jefferson County politics, serving as Jefferson County circuit clerk from 1987 through 2014. Before that, he was an associate judge on the old Jefferson County Court from 1979 until 1984, when the County Court’s name was changed to the County Commission. Then, for two years, he was a county commissioner.

Wagner-Westermayer said she believes her father’s death could have been prevented if the pandemic had not been politicized.

“He survived witnessing combat in Vietnam to be taken by a pandemic that was made political from the beginning,” she said.

Wagner-Westermayer said her dad began to feel ill the week before Thanksgiving.

“He actually thought he was getting a cold and had told my mom that he just didn’t feel well,” she said.

Not long after that, he developed a low-grade fever and was very tired, Wagner-Westermayer said.

“By Monday (Nov. 23), my mother was driving him to the hospital because he was lethargic, he couldn’t stay awake and something was wrong.”

He was taken to the emergency room at Missouri Baptist Hospital in St. Louis County.

“He stayed for about four hours. He was given an inhaler and told to go home and drink fluids,” Wagner-Westermayer said.”

Wagner-Westermayer said over the next couple of days her father’s health declined and he returned to the hospital on Nov. 25.

“This time accompanying my mother was myself, my brother, sister-in-law and my cousin. We all drove separately because in the meanwhile, from Monday to Wednesday, my mother had tested positive,” Wagner-Westermayer said. “We unloaded my dad into a wheelchair and I told him we loved him and that was the last time we saw him before he died.”

Wagner-Westermayer said the hospital would call every three to six hours with an update.

“(The calls) were always from nurses, because the doctors were so overwhelmed,” she said.

Wagner-Westermayer said her dad had gotten an iPhone earlier in the summer so he could use FaceTime.

“Funny enough, when we would FaceTime with him, we would only see the top of his head because he couldn’t figure out how to hold the phone,” she said.

Wagner-Westermayer said it was hard to watch from afar as her father’s health declined.

“You’re thinking, ‘This is COVID; this only kills 1 to 2 percent of the population. This isn’t going to hurt my dad. There’s no way this is going to take someone as strong and hard working as my dad was,’” she said. “He didn’t have underlying conditions.”

But his condition continued to worsen.

“He could hardly catch his breath to talk to us,” his daughter said. “He was making his phone calls to his friends telling them then that this was the end and he was scared to death. He would probably kill me if he ever knew I was telling you that, but he was scared to death because he was alone in the hospital.”

Wagner-Westermayer said during her last FaceTime call with her dad he struggled to talk.

“He could hardly breathe and he was holding up signs that he had written to tell us things, because his condition was worsening,” she said.

Wagner-Westermayer said she received a 3 a.m. phone call that her father was placed on a ventilator.

“The next seven days, my dad was intubated, which was an emotional roller coaster,” she said. “They believe he had a pulmonary embolism. So we were called to go to the hospital to say our final good-byes and that was really an eye-opening, gut-wrenching, disgusting, awful experience that I don’t wish on my worst enemy.”

Wagner-Westermayer said she and her family members were in full personal protective equipment during that visit.

“We had two layers of gloves on and hair nets and robes and shoes and goggles and masks that put all these other paper masks to shame,” she said. “It’s upsetting how we complain about wearing masks when what these doctors and nurses have to wear every day is 10 times worse.”

Wagner-Westermayer said her father was fully sedated.

“We left the hospital that night, and my dad actually got a little better, which was a surprise to all of us. We had hope, which is such a dangerous thing to have when you have a critically ill patient with COVID,” she said.

A few days later, Wagner-Westermayer was called back to the hospital to say another final good-bye because her father had kidney failure.

“The only thing keeping him alive at this point was the ventilator,’’ she said. “We never got to see my dad (in person) before he was intubated, which is the worst part.”

Wagner died Dec. 8.

Wagner-Westermayer said she will always remember 2020 as the year she lost her father.

“My dad went from healthy to dead in 20 days. It took 20 days for COVID to kill him,” she said.