Wagler, Peter (1987-2006)

Mennonite Weekly Review obituary: 2006 Mar 6 p. 1

Birth date: 1987

Soldier's death hits close to home for plain community

By Robert Rhodes

Mennonite Weekly Review

Partridge, Kan. — When Peter Wagler joined the Army in September 2004, it wasn't the career choice his parents would have preferred.

The country was at war in Iraq, and the family's faith heritage taught that taking up the sword or doing other violence is wrong.

Still, the intelligent 17-year-old — home-schooled, precocious and brimming with initiative — had his mid made up. convincing his family to accept his decision was another matter.

But his father, David — raised in the nonresistant Old Order and Beachy Amish churches — finally had decided that instead of hearing out another of his son's proposals and counter-proposals for enlisting, he would take his leading from the Bible.

The previous Father's Day, David Wagler said, he had been impressed by a Sunday school lesson on the story of the Prodigal Son — "how the father held his son with an open hand," Wagler said Feb. 22. "He gave his son his inheritance, even though he did not agree with his son."

Despite his own objections to military service, Wagler signed the age waiver required for his son's enlistment, and Peter began basic training at Fort Knox, Ky.

"Peter was not rebellious," Wagler said. "But we felt God was asking us to hold Peter with an open hand."

Assigned to Company D, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, Peter served on the crew of an M1A2 Abrams tank. In December, his unit deployed to Kuwait from For Hood, Texas.

During a phone conversation on New Year's Eve, his parents learned their son was calling from somewhere inside Iraq. Peter phone often, friends said, including a call to his mother on Jan. 20.

But when Cpl. Wagler was killed in Baghdad on Jan. 23 — the victim, along with another soldier, of a roadside bomb that tore into his tank's most vulnerable area — his parents' worst fears were realized. His death also struck at the heart of the plain community the family came from.

Remembered by his friends as someone who loved the outdoors and was an expert mechanic, Peter Wagler was buried in Partridge Community Cemetery on Feb. 10, on what would have been his 19th birthday.

In attendance at the funeral at First Church of the Nazarene in Hutchinson were a number of people from local Beachy Amish congregations, who also provided a meal for funeral guests afterward.

"Our church very intentionally said we want tor each out to the family and show that we care," said David L. Miller, a minister and elder at Center Amish Mennonite Church, a Beachy congregation at Partridge.

Though some Beachy church members felt it was not appropriate to attend the services because of the military presence there, Miller said most had no reservations about attending, including him.

"This was something we've never experienced," said Miller, who had once served as a minister with Peter's grandfather. "But to attend the funeral was not a compromise. A lot of our people went."

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A table in David Wagler's office in downtown Hutchinson was crowded with dozens of condolence cards a few weeks after Peter's death. On the wall next to his desk, Peter's face looked out from the family calendar page for February, a picture made the last time Peter was at home, for Thanksgiving.

Wagler, a financial adviser who with his wife once served as a missionary with the Slavic Gospel Association in Europe, said the cards primarily are from his clients. At home, on the family's farm near Partridge, are many more, some from total strangers.

David Wagler, whose wife, Trish, is also from a plain background, grew up among the Amish and Beachy Amish communities near Partridge. His father, Willie, was a Beachy minister and his grandfather, also named Peter Wagler, was an Old Order Amish deacon.

The family's departure from the Beachy church was gradual, born of circumstances rather than any decision leave the plain life style.

After Wagler decided to start mission work in Europe, where he handled Russian-language Bibles and other devotional literature, he said his family felt isolated without a congregation.

Soon, because there were no Beachy congregations in Europe, they began attending a local church. Later, they affiliated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance.

Today, the Waglers — who had eight children, the youngest now 10 — are members of Berean Baptist Church in Hutchinson, which Wagler described as a theologically conservative congregation where their views about the military, while not in the majority, have been respected.

Though they no longer attend a plain congregation, the family is still connected in some ways to their former faith community.

Peter, who at 16 made the dean's list when he studied pre-nursing at Hutchinson Community College, worked as a certified nurses' aide at Hutchinson's Mennonite Friendship Manor.

Though they didn't agree about the military, Wagler said Peter was a committed Christian who already knew the value of service to others.

Wagler also believes his son's convictions about military service might have changed, given time.

"When he went in, he was talking in terms of career military," Wagler said. "But after a year, he was talking about after he got out. . . . So I think there was a development in his thinking there."

Still, Wagler said, his son was at peace with his decision to enlist and with serving in Iraq.

"He wanted to be there," Wagler said. "He was a man of aciton and he wanted to be where there was action."

Not that this made his parents worry any less.

"We prayed for him a lot," Wagler said. "We were concerned even more for his spiritual safety."

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Someone else who was praying for the young soldier was Fred Pieplow, a mentor to Peter. Together, the two ran a firewood business and worked on cars.

"We prayed for Peter's protection regularly, but God had other plans," Pieplow said Feb. 21. "He had no regrets. He said if he was killed, he knew where he was going. . . . He knew that tank was not going to take care of him."

Wagler also believes his son had no regrets about his brief life.

In a letter Peter left at home, to be opened in the event of his death, he said as much. He also had a word of comfort for his parents, who had let him pursue his dream of enlisting.

"If I am dead, don't blame yourselves," he wrote." Just know that with the Lord's help, you did the best thing you knew how."

Wagler said his faith has helped him start to deal with his son's death.

"I don't know how a person would go through what we've gone through without the Lord," Wagler said. "We've just seen the Lord's grace take care of us. It has really deepened my faith."

Wagler also hopes the impact of Peter's death will help deepen other people's faith as well.

"God's ways are not our ways," Wagler said. "Peter touched many people with his life, but with his death he touched many, many more. . . . We've been amazed at the impact Peter's death has had."