Robert F. Wagner; Mayor of New York for 3 Terms

Robert F. Wagner, scion and patriarch of a political family who triumphed over a series of crises as mayor of the nation’s largest city but never completed his personal agenda, died Tuesday in New York City.

Wagner was mayor of New York when the Dodgers and Giants left for California, and when race riots and police scandals plagued the city. His 12-year tenure from 1954 to 1965 also was marked by the arrival of the baseball Mets and the football Jets, the saving of Carnegie Hall and the establishment of Lincoln Center.

Police and an ambulance were called to Wagner’s Manhattan home early Tuesday, said Capt. Michael O’Loughlin of Emergency Medical Services. Wagner was pronounced dead at the scene.

He was 80 and reportedly had been in failing health for some time.

Son of the Democratic U.S. senator whose name become synonymous with the federal law that established the National Labor Relations Board, Wagner was the first Democrat to win three four-year terms as mayor and only the third candidate this century to serve that long. Republican Fiorello La Guardia and Democrat Edward I. Koch equaled his stay in office.

“He was part of a family that had a tradition of public service,” Gov. Mario Cuomo said shortly after the death of the deliberate, self-contained and stylish Wagner. “He was the consummate public servant.”

Mayor David N. Dinkins, the city’s first black mayor, lauded Wagner as “the first mayor to bring women and people of color into city government in a real, meaningful way.”

Wagner never realized his greatest political ambition, to serve in the United States Senate as had his father, Robert F. Wagner Sr., a two-decade senator and confidant of Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1956, Wagner lost his only attempt--to Republican Jacob K. Javits--as part of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s second landslide presidential victory.

Robert Ferdinand Wagner was born near Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s residence. He was 9 when his mother died.

In 1964, his wife died and he retired the following year to spend more time with his two sons. He told surprised associates at the time that he wanted to provide his then 21- and 17-year-old sons with the “guidance of a full-time father.” He did serve as ambassador to Spain from 1968 to 1969 and as President Jimmy Carter’s envoy to the Vatican from 1978 to 1980.

Wagner made another bid for City Hall in 1969, but finished second in the Democratic primary. The winner, Mario A. Procaccino, lost the general election to incumbent Republican John V. Lindsay.

One of his sons, Robert Wagner III, is chief of the New York Board of Education and is a former city councilman, city planning commissioner and deputy mayor.

As a youth, Robert Wagner Jr. was caught up in Tammany Hall politics, running errands at conventions and chatting with such Democratic giants as Gov. Alfred E. Smith and U.S. Sen. Herbert H. Lehman.

Wagner graduated from Yale University and its law school and attended the Harvard School of Business Administration and the School of International Relations at Geneva.

Only six weeks after graduating from law school in 1937, he won a seat in the state Assembly, where his father had served three decades earlier. Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he left the Assembly to join the Army Air Corps, emerging as a highly decorated lieutenant colonel with six battle stars, the Bronze Star and French Croix de Guerre.

After the war, then-Mayor William O’Dwyer named him to various city posts. Scandals forced O’Dwyer’s resignation, but Wagner emerged unscathed.

In 1953, Tammany Hall made him its successful candidate against Mayor Vincent Impellitteri, but he soon turned against the old machine leaders and won a second term as mayor as the “anti-boss” candidate. His victory spelled the virtual end of Tammany’s influence.

Wagner--whose father lived to see him elected mayor--often said he relished the challenges of the job, despite the race riots, waterfront and newspaper strikes, police scandals, school boycotts by blacks and a water shortage.

He was criticized frequently for procrastinating, often forming study committees rather than taking action.

Wagner was mayor when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Giants baseball team moved to San Francisco. He had Shea Stadium built and was on hand when the New York Mets first played baseball there in 1962. In 1959, the New York Titans (later the Jets) had begun playing professional football at the Polo Grounds, where the Giants had played baseball.

Wagner also helped save Carnegie Hall and kept the subway fare at 15 cents. The ride is now $1.15.

With then-Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller, he was instrumental in establishing the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and battled parks czar Robert Moses to allow Joseph Papp to stage free Shakespeare productions in Central Park.

After the death of his first wife, Susan Edwards, who was the sister of a Yale classmate, he married Barbara Joan Cavanagh, a friend of his first wife. That union later was annulled.

In 1975, he married Phyllis Fraser Cerf, widow of publisher Bennett Cerf.

Wagner often quoted his father’s early advice to him: “When in doubt, don’t.” But that phlegmatic style began to sour with voters as “charisma” became the buzzword in an age of televised political campaigns.

It was to be the dashing, charismatic and highly photogenic Lindsay who moved into Wagner’s beloved Gracie Mansion, vowing to end the “crisis” of the city.