SOUTH BEND — Dr. Samuel Bernard ‘Bernie’ Vagner called himself an “old-fashioned” physician. He made house calls and provided treatment to sick patients — often — regardless of their ability to pay.
“Whoever came in and could pay their bills — and even if they couldn’t — I treated them,” Vagner said during an oral history interview conducted by the Indiana University South Bend Civil Rights Heritage Center in 2003. “And if you paid me,” he said, “that was a bonus.”
Vagner, one of South Bend’s first Black doctors and the city’s first Black surgeon, died on Sept. 18 at 103.
John Charles Bryant, a patient and friend of Vagner’s and his wife Audrey, said Vagner was highly respected and loved by many.
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“He had a personality that was radiant and bubbly, but on the other hand he could be very firm,” Bryant recalled. “He would let you know that if you were not going to do what he said, to find yourself another doctor.”
Bryant said that Vagner was making house calls to check in on his patients as late as the 1960s.
“He would go into the office and then go by patients’ houses to check on them,” Bryant said. “He was very devoted.”
Vagner set up his practice in South Bend in 1949, and, he said back in 2003, that his integrated medical practice was busy immediately.
Bryant said that patients who had appointments with Vagner would have a long wait.
“You would sit in his office and sometimes you would sit in his office for two hours before he could see you,” Bryant said. “But once you saw him, he didn’t put you out of the office until he was finished or until you were finished talking with him.
“He never hurried anybody.”
Dr. Mark Green, a longtime South Bend dentist who was a tenant in Vagner’s office and eventually purchased the building from him, said Vagner was a friendly and giving man who enjoyed talking and mentoring people.
“Because he would come over to the building, we spent a lot of time just hanging around talking about things,” Green said. “He was almost like a grandfather to me, really.”
Green said that Vagner’s example and love for his college fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, played a large role in Green’s decision to join the organization.
Meanwhile, 2003, Vagner said that when he became a physician, he was accepted into the medical community in South Bend and was able to practice at Memorial and St. Joseph hospitals, but the family’s biggest struggle centered around finding housing.
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Both Vagner and his wife, who died in 2012, said they met discrimination from landlords and realtors throughout the 1950s and 60s.
“There were no apartments available for Blacks, and that’s the way it was,” Vagner said in ’03. “The thing is, no realtor or no real estate person, would encourage a Black person to live anywhere but an all- Black neighborhood, which was OK with me, but there were no apartments in the all-Black neighborhood.”
The discrimination that the couple faced sparked a career in activism on both of their parts on the issue of fair housing. They were involved in efforts to convince the city to pass a fair housing ordinance in the 1960s and testified at a hearing about housing discrimination held by the University of Notre Dame Law School in 1963. The Vagners played a key role in the city’s eventual passage of a fair housing ordinance in 1968.
Vagner was born on Oct. 28, 1917 in Alexandria, La. He graduated from Xavier University in 1939 and from Meherry Medical College in 1943, the same year that he and Audrey, who he met at Xavier, got married. The couple moved to St. Louis where Vagner completed his internship at Homer G. Phillips Hospital.
Vagner’s first office was located on the corner of Washington and Walnut streets in South Bend. In 1963, he built a medical office building on the corner of Lincolnway West and Huey Street. He retired from private practice in 1977, but worked as a staff physician at the University of Notre Dame for another 28 years.
Dr. Mark Green, a long time South Bend dentist who was a tenant in Vagner’s office, purchased the building from Vagner. Green said that Vagner was friendly and giving man who enjoyed talking and mentoring people.
“Because he would come over to the building, we spent a lot of time just hanging around talking about things,” Green said. “He was almost like a grandfather to me, really.”
Green said that Vagner’s example and love for his college fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, played a large role in Green’s decision to join the organization.
A private inurnment has already occurred at South Bend’s Riverview Cemetery, but a celebration of life service is being planned by the family in his honor for late October. Tributes to Dr. Vagner may be left online at www.Palmerfuneralhomes.com.
Email South Bend Tribune reporter Howard Dukes at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter: @DukesHoward
