08/31/2026
For Wags. Always. 🇺🇸
There are some thank-yous that are harder to write than others..
This is one of them.
The 7th Annual Salute to Service Dubuque Golf Outing raised an extraordinary $33,000 for the Veterans Freedom Center and $1,760 for Honor Flight of Dubuque, bringing the seven-year total to an unbelievable $116,260.
Those numbers are incredible..
But to us, this outing represents something that can't be measured with a dollar sign.
It honors Jim “Wags” Wagner.
Our founder. Our friend. Our family.
And Lord, do we miss him.
We miss the man who could somehow fall out of a boat and come back up with his glasses cattywampus.
We miss seeing him in Willie’s Army Jeep.
We miss him greeting the community every day, talking to everybody, making people laugh, and making veterans feel like they had somewhere they belonged.
Most of all, we miss the enormous heart underneath all of it.
Wags loved veterans.
Not ceremonially. Not just on Veterans Day. Not because somebody was watching.
He loved them on the ordinary Tuesdays.
He loved the veterans who needed a hand, the ones who needed somebody to listen, the ones who needed to laugh, and the ones who simply needed a place where nobody had to explain what they'd been through.
That love became the Veterans Freedom Center.
And somehow, even though Wags has crossed from this life, that love never left the building.
We see him in every veteran who walks through our doors.
We see him in every volunteer who says, “What can I do?”
We see him in this community when hundreds of people come together in his name and say, we haven't forgotten.
And we see him in Salute to Service Dubuque, which continues to honor the man who taught so many of us what taking care of veterans actually looks like.
To every golfer, sponsor, volunteer, board member, family member and friend who made this year's outing possible: thank you for remembering our Wags.
Thank you for telling us, through your actions, that what he built mattered.
Thank you for helping us carry it forward.
And thank you for taking care of the veterans he loved so damn much.
We like to think our big angel was somewhere nearby that day, probably supervising the whole operation, telling somebody they were doing it wrong, laughing his ass off, and wearing those glasses just a little cattywampus.
We miss you, Wags.
We will keep the doors open.
We will keep taking care of each other.
We will keep laughing.
And we will keep doing the work you taught us to do.
Because a man like Jim Wagner doesn't really leave.
He becomes part of the mission.
From all of us at the Veterans Freedom Center, thank you, Salute to Service Dubuque, for helping make sure Wags' love for veterans lives on.
This one's for you, Wags. Always. 🇺🇸
