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In seventh grade, the music teacher at Marc Wager”™s Long Island junior high school determined Wager had a good ear for music. The assessment may have been self-serving since it coincided with the need for a tuba player in the band and Wager got the job. “I was the shortest guy with the biggest instrument,” he says. He draws a schematic in the air recounting his memory of the junior high tuba section after he came on board: like a row of high-rises with a two-family unit tucked in the middle.
Wager today is wiry and athletic, 53 and a pediatrician. To visit him on a cold January morning is to rewrite the clich̩ about the busy life of the one-armed wallpaper hanger. The busiest person in the world could well be a childrenӪs doctor at the height of cold and flu season. During an hour visit, Wager steps room to room and fields calls, all with a calmness that could make a person forget his workday is the stuff of health vs. illness. The doctor is cool and reassuring, but the concern shows on the faces of Bill and Marie Saunders, who have brought congested 4-month-old Julia for an early-morning visit to the Pediatric Group of New Rochelle. To keep Julia and her 4-year-old sister Brianna smiling, Mickey and Minnie Mouse climb on the hoses of WagerӪs stethoscope.
“I love kids,” he says. “I”™m just a big kid at heart.” Julia and Brianna reciprocate with smiles that could melt the ice on the sidewalk.
From that first tuba note as a tween, Wager never stopped playing music. Upon entering Lehigh University, a school he selected for its marching band, he left the tuba for the French horn. At Lehigh, he studied Spanish (he”™s fluent) and natural science, with a music minor. The formula got him into Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Following his residency, he accepted a two-year adolescent medicine fellowship at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx. He practices the French horn five or six times per week and has played in more than a hundred shows in the region.
Wager confesses a predisposition to the Disney menagerie, but the Looney Tunes wiseacres are also his allies in the never-ending battle between fidgety kids and their doctor. Winnie the Pooh and friends cavort on his tie. “I have other ties,” he says, ticking off the M&M characters, Bugs Bunny, Elmo and Spider-Man who also hang around his neck. He enjoys the Disney parks and was to Disneyland Paris last spring.
Wager plays French horn “a lot,” including with the New Rochelle High School orchestra and, on a paid basis, with other school districts throughout the region. He plays in three groups: the Amber Woodwind quintet, along with wife Teresa Wager who plays the flute; the St. Thomas Orchestra; and the Hudson Brass Quintet, all in Westchester County. He plays concerts and fundraisers, including two moneymakers for the Bartow-Pell Mansion in the Bronx. He has sung at Carnegie Hall: “a phonetic interpretation of Japanese in German. That was cool.” And he danced Israeli folk dances at Lincoln Center.
“West Side Story” is a favorite show: “It has a great horn book.” He”™s done “Tommy” twice: “It”™s like playing a horn concerto with a rock band. It”™s a really fun show.” In “Kiss Me, Kate” with the Clocktower Players in a performance at Irvington Town Hall, Wager achieved what is for every actor a high-water mark: “My Shakespearean scene.” He also got to sing and dance in the production, “which was a lot of fun.” A stage dream is to play Hysterium in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”
“I don”™t act often, but when I do I love it,” Wager says. His favorite role was on the stage at the College of New Rochelle ”“ “which does great theater” ”“ that of the ill-fated Herr Schultz in “Cabaret.”
Wager retreats briefly to his office”™s “clutter room,” which isn”™t much cluttered, unless you count one of those doctor scales with the balance and the weights at eye level. On the wall, 14 works of art produced by tiny fingers say thank you. Such adulation is noteworthy in that it”™s directed toward the man who dispenses the shots.
Wager credits his medical partners Dr. Susie Cutler and Dr. Bill Meyers with sustaining his music. “I”™m busy as a pediatrician, but I feel lucky to be in a group,” he says. “They”™re very accommodating so I can have my dual life.” The practice is open seven days a week.
Marc and Teresa Wager have two sons: Adam, who works for TV”™s “The Colbert Report” as an associate producer and music coordinator; and Noah, who is a senior at Boston University.
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