Stanley "Zip" Wagner, a retired educator who as head counselor at City College influenced thousands of students during his nearly three-decade tenure, died of pulmonary fibrosis July 31 at Brighton Gardens, a Bethesda assisted-living facility, where he had moved this year.
The former longtime Pikesville resident was 95.
Mr. Wagner, the son of parents from Austria, was born on New York's Lower East Side and raised in the Bronx.
"His brother said he got the nickname 'Zip' because he zipped up in height about 6 inches during the summer of 1928," said his son, Ira J. Wagner of Bethesda. "I always heard he got it because he was slow afoot on the base paths when playing baseball. The latter explanation was the more popular one that most people thought was true."
After graduating from Evander Childs High School in 1930, he enrolled at the Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1934.
In 1936, he earned a master's degree in health and physical education from Columbia University.
Mr. Wagner returned to Baltimore two years later and married Evelyn Jacobson, whom he had met on a blind date while a Hopkins student in 1931. She died this year.
He began his career in Baltimore public schools as a hygiene and physical-education teacher at School No. 46 at Broadway and North Avenue.
In 1944, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces and at war's end resumed his teaching career. He studied guidance counseling on the G.I. Bill of Rights and was appointed school guidance counselor at Hampstead Hill Junior High School in 1950.
In 1956, Mr. Wagner was offered the counseling position at City College, and later described his years there as "the best years of my educational life."
He was appointed head counselor and retained that position until retiring in 1977.
"Thousands of young men knew him as they passed through City during the years when the school had as many as 4,000 students per year," his son said.
Through his work, Mr. Wagner forged lifelong links with his former students, many of whom became business people, lawyers, politicians or worked in newspapers, radio and TV.
"Oh, Mr. Wagner, he had seen plenty of high school angst," former Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, now dean of the Howard University School of Law, said Friday, laughing. "He knew all about the things that were important to a 16-year-old, and he could talk about them. He'd sit there and politely give you some of his stories."
