About Shelby
Award-Winning Author • Educator • On Air Personality • Talk Show Host • Podcast Host • Public Speaker • Church Organist • Choir Director
AWARDS
Shelby J. Wagner is honored to be included in the Marquis’ Who’s Who in America, 2023-2024 Edition, the Marquis’ Who’s Who in the Midwest 1990-1991 Edition, and to have her first book be the winner of nine book awards including a Silver Medal in the Living Now Book Awards, Relationships/Marriage Category for 2021.
THE EARLY YEARS
Wagner started piano lessons at the age of twelve, and by the time she was sixteen, she became the organist at her church, had acquired several piano students, was teaching a Sunday School class, began taking voice lessons, became a National Honor Society Member, and won the lead in the senior play.
Wagner was accepted into the Charter Class of Oakland University, where she sang in the choir and the school’s first performance ensemble, was a student senator for one semester, wrote for the first school newspaper, and graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in education. She earned a master’s degree from Michigan State University in 1967 and a Bachelor of Music Degree in organ and voice. Wagner has been an organist/ music director for several churches in Oakland County, Michigan, and Tennessee.
NEW BEGINNINGS:
Two days after graduation from OU, Wagner began teaching a class of thirty-nine precocious first graders for the Oxford School District. It was a very memorable six weeks. She has been known to say she wished she had written a book at the time. She would have called it, “Everything I Needed to Know in Life, I Learned Teaching First Graders.” She still offers the opinion that every teacher should be required to begin their career teaching first graders.
“To say the experience was challenging is an understatement!” Wagner reminisces. Following are two incidents she has never forgotten. On her third day she met the principal in the hallway after releasing her students to lunch recess. He smiled and asked how things were going. As she started to reply, no words would come. Instead, she burst into tears. Grinning, he patted her shoulder, and said, “I’ll see you later.” As luck would have it, she came down with the measles and the children had a substitute for the last eight days of the school year.
However, she persevered, returned the following year, and although she had a much more satisfying experience, she accepted a third-grade teaching position at Meadow Brook School in Rochester Hills. When she informed the Oxford principal she would not be returning, he hugged her and said, “I’m really sorry to see you go. I wish I had ten teachers just like you!”
In 1987, the Wagner family relocated from Auburn Hills to Oxford, Michigan, and Wagner returned to teach music in the Oxford School District. She retired in 2000.
Another New Beginning – RETIREMENT
Wagner and her husband, Robert, moved to Tennessee, where they built a Deltec home. The house was circular in design with seventeen sides. It was built just outside of Parrottsville, TN, (the “oldest town in Tennessee”), and had a beautiful view of the Smoky Mountains from every window in the house. The Wagners were known as “the couple building that round house.”
Everyone had a good laugh the day a delivery truck driver quipped, “You two must have a really good sense of humor to build an igloo in Tennessee!” He was right. It really did look like an igloo at that stage. Later on, it would resemble a battleship, and then a spaceship. When it was finished, however, it looked like “home,” and everyone who saw invited inside, complimented on its design and its beautiful view of the Smoky Mountains.
Soon after they moved into the house, the couple got part-time jobs at Dollywood, a theme park in Pigeon Forge. In 2003, they began learning to build websites, started their own business, Smoky Mountain Creations Design and Development and over the next eight years they helped forty small businesses to have a quality business website at a reasonable price.
As they were building their website business, the couple decided to help local business owners by founding a Parrottsville Business Association. Shelby prepared and submitted the legal documents required by the State of Tennessee, and once organized, was voted president for several terms. The group raised funds for two business scholarships by preparing and selling a Parrottsville Telephone Directory.
Wagner was organist for the Parrottsville United Methodist Church and the Salem Lutheran Church. She also worked for two-and-a-half years as the part-time secretary for the Lutheran churches and acquired several piano students.
TRAGEDY STRUCK AND BROUGHT ANOTHER BEGINNING
Robert passed away in 2016, and Shelby moved back to Michigan to be close to her family. Following an incident in which she fell prey to a romance scam, she wrote and self-published her first book, “Learning to Dance in the Rain.”
INSPIRATIONAL AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER
Shelby J. Wagner is now an award-winning, non-fiction author and educator who advocates for empowering others with hope to embrace new beginnings, to grieve in a healthy manner so they can heal, to learn how to protect themselves emotionally, physically, and financially, to develop resilience.
Wagner’s memoir/self-help book “Learning to Dance in the Rain II: Surviving Grief, Internet Dating, and Romance Scams” is now in its third edition. Read its Kirkus Reviews and others (in the menu above), and see the nine badges it has won, including a Silver Medal in the Living Now Book Awards in the Relationships and Marriage Category.
The book inspired her talk show/podcast, “Learning to Dance in the Rain” with Talk4 Media. Wagner’s sense of humor, warmth, and wisdom can be witnessed in its 70+ recorded episodes on Audible.com, https://youtube.com/@ShelbyWagner, https://learningtodanceintherain.com.
Wagner has self-published three other self-help books, “SCAMS: A Resource,” “Finding Love Again: A Senior’s Guide to Online Dating,” and “Two Left Feet? Dance Anyway! A Step-by-Step Guide to Learn to Dance.”
Writing from Personal Experience
Wagner writes from her heart. Her books are short, easy to read, and filled with her true and deeply personal experiences, well-blended together with her practical wisdom. Although written with the single over fifty crowd in mind, a married reader who borrowed “Learning to Dance in the Rain,” from a friend told Wagner, “I think the book is of interest to everyone. It contains important information that everyone needs to know.”
Wagner currently resides in southwest Michigan near her daughter and son. When she is not writing, she may be found working in her garden, dancing up a storm, making her friends laugh, or playing cards with her only grandson.
Please click here to visit Wagner’s Author Page on amazon.com.