Father walks to grieve for his children

Man hopes to raise awareness, scholarship funds with 380-mile trek

BY BRAD BARNES - bbarnes@ledger-enquirer.com --

"This ol' dog's gonna tear me up," says Lee Wagner, 55, who's out of breath from walking as he talks into his cell phone. The dog barks in the background.

"That's OK, I've got my son's 9-iron with me," he says. "That'll protect me."

His son is dead. So is his daughter. Both died in a freak single-car accident four years ago in LaGrange, Ga.

They're the reason he's on the road today, hoofing it to North Carolina, beating off the occasional stray dog or redneck hurtling a beer bottle. His journey ends Sunday, on Mother's Day, the day that Wagner and his wife -- the kids' mother -- lost their two teens.

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Walk it off.

That's what a coach might tell a football player who got the wind knocked out of him or suffered a stinger on the field.

And that's what Wagner's doing. He's going from his home in Peachtree City, Ga., to Bethesda, N.C., trying to walk off the sting of death.

On the fateful day in 2004, Jillian Wagner, 18, and her brother, Lee, 16, were heading home from their grandparents' house in Columbus. Their own parents -- Lee and wife Debbie -- drove separately and headed home later, only learning of the wreck after they were home.

With the walk, the elder Lee hopes to raise awareness about the danger of SUVs in the hands of inexperienced drivers and about making good choices in general. He's also hoping to bolster the money in a scholarship fund the parents created with the kids' college funds.

Wagner says the wreck happened when Jillian, who was driving, made a sudden, evasive move on Interstate 85 to avoid a car merging from an on-ramp. Her Jeep Cherokee spun sideways before momentum toppled the vehicle and rolled it like a die on the felt of a craps table. Both kids were wearing seat belts, but both were ejected.

"You gotta always try to make the right choices," he says.

"My kids, they weren't drunk, they weren't on drugs. They weren't speeding. They weren't out late at night. The roads weren't wet," he says. "And still they're gone. Imagine what happens to the odds if you make bad choices in there."

The parents held two funerals, one in Peachtree City and one in Bethesda, their former home.

Last March, the father began walking and tracking the distance, with the idea of covering 380 miles, or the equivalent distance between the two cities.

"I'm traveling their final journey," he told Debbie, a Columbus native and 1975 Columbus High School graduate.

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By April 30, he'd walked 178 miles, and he drove to the equivalent spot on U.S. 29 in South Carolina and started hoofing the rest of the trip on the highway, walking every day and staying with a string of friends he'd lined up along the route. He'll arrive at Bethesda United Methodist Church on Sunday, which is not only Mother's Day but also his birthday.

He's a sales director for Boyd Brothers Transportation. He conducts what business he can on the cell phone during the day, and he blogs his progress and works from his laptop at night.

His spirits typically are high.

"I think I've lost about 15 pounds so far. You can do that if you just drink water and eat energy bars," he says. "But every now and then I pass a Dairy Queen and there's a chocolate sundae calling my name. I blow that whole day."

On Thursday he walked from the north city limits of Charlotte, N.C., to China Grove, which is about 25 miles and one of his longer stretches.

"I was a whipped puppy. My knees and hips were screaming," he says. "It's been great therapy for me."

But when he talks about his kids, he'll still break out in sobs.

"It'll always be tough," he says. "I tell grieving parents, 'We can mourn forever, every one of us.' We all belong, unfortunately, to that same fraternity -- the fraternity nobody wants."

Cable news host Nancy Grace has interviewed him, as have newspapers in Fayetteville, Ga., and Winston-Salem, N.C.

"The support of people I meet is just phenomenal."

That's aside, of course, from the hick in the pickup truck who pitched a beer bottle at him in Gaffney, S.C. No worries, though. The pitch was "high and away," he says.

And if there was any more trouble, he had his son's golf club at the ready.

"I borrowed that from him," he says, "and he wouldn't mind a bit."

Contact Brad Barnes at 706-571-8524