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 Emil Wagner, Majority Owner of the Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos 
and On the Brink of Losing Control of the Famous Resort, 
Commits Suicide
 
By Jack Brown and Ralph Vigoda, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News 

Nov. 5--The majority owner of the Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos, millions in debt and on the brink of losing control of the famous resort that had occupied nearly a half-century of his life, killed himself hours before a court hearing to determine the property�s immediate future.

Emil Wagner, 77, was found in the bathroom of his home near the resort in Mount Pocono about 7 a.m.  Wednesday, shot once in the head with a .38-caliber handgun. The court session was scheduled later that day in Monroe County Court in Stroudsburg.

�He was married to Mount Airy,� said Bob Uguccioni, a friend of Wagner�s and the executive director of the Pocono Mountains Vacation Bureau Inc. �He had no wife. He had no children. He had no immediate family.  Mount Airy was his family, and he saw it was about to be taken away from him, or closed. I think the pressure of that was too much.�

The death was ruled a suicide by the county coroner.

Wagner, whose Mount Airy Resorts also includes the Strickland�s Mountain Inn and Pocono Gardens Lodge, had been beset by financial problems for much of the last decade. Court documents show the company owes $29 million in mortgage payments and millions more in state and federal taxes and to vendors, utilities and insurers.

Still, some friends�who described Wagner as an optimist�were surprised that he would take his own life.
�I saw him four days ago, and he seemed in very good spirits,� said Dario Belardi, a former executive at Caesar�s Pocono Resorts who frequently stopped by Mount Airy to have coffee and chat with his old friend.  �He was cheerful. There was no indication that this would happen.�

Belardi, 61, who runs a limousine service in the Poconos, said he learned how bleak the financial situation was in 1992, when he worked with Wagner and saw the resort�s records.

He and others familiar with Mount Airy�s finances said Wagner got in trouble in the late 1980s, when the economy took a downturn, just after Wagner and co-owner Herman Martens�Wagner�s cousin, who died two years ago�undertook a huge expansion, pouring money into the lodge and buying other properties.  Compounding the woes were the thousands of vacationers who were turning to Disney World, Atlantic City and the cruise lines for their getaways.

The problems became public when Oaktree Capital Management of Los Angeles, the mortgage holder, foreclosed. Hostmark Management Group of Chicago was appointed by the court in August to run the property. Hostmark officials said there was little money left in the bank and cash would run out by this month.  Hostmark has asked the court for permission to close the facility�either for a few months or permanently� should it deem the situation hopeless.

That was the subject of the hearing scheduled two days ago, which is now set for next Wednesday.
�It was like losing a child,� said Belardi. �The resort was all he lived for.�

Wagner became part of the Mount Airy family in 1952. A native of Czechoslovakia, he arrived in the United States that year to study. During a visit to the small resort in Mount Pocono that his uncle and aunt, John and Suzanne Martens, had opened in 1936, Wagner fell in love with the area. He took a job as a bartender�s assistant and was employed there ever since.

Over the years, he encouraged the purchase of more land and other properties until Mount Airy Lodge became one of the largest year-round resort complexes in the country, encompassing a man-made lake, a convention center, golf course, tennis courts, indoor and outdoor pools, jogging and hiking trails and downhill and cross-country skiing. He took control of the hotel with his partner in 1980.

�If you look up the word entrepreneur in the dictionary, you�ll see his picture,� Belardi said. �He was a legend and an innovator. He brought in big-name entertainment on a regular basis. There isn�t a travel agency in the world that doesn�t know Mount Airy.�

Anita de Palma, who books the acts at the lodge and has been a family friend for almost four decades, said Wagner helped open the Poconos to New York travelers by advertising heavily to the Northeast.
�He was the first one here who really spent to put the business in the papers in New York,� she said. �He believed in advertising. He believed in reaching the public directly.�

He was generous with local schools and charities, Belardi said, and he never forgot his roots: He reached out to his fellow immigrants, offering jobs to any Czech or Slovak who sought employment with the resort. Mount Airy hosted the Slovakian prime minister, the First Slovak Youth Congress and folk ensembles from the country. In 1995, he received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, given to foreign-born citizens who have excelled in social, public and business life and have been involved in ethnic activity.

Uguccioni said the resort remains open and is almost booked for the Christmas holiday season. He said one short-term solution would be to close during November and for much of December, typically the slowest time of the year. That would put about 600 people out of work now; about 900 work during peak season, he said.

Should Mount Airy shut down permanently, it would hurt the Poconos, but not kill it, Uguccioni said.

Ironically, he added, the last two years have been very successful for resort operators. In the case of Mount Airy, though, it was not the lack of business, but the overwhelming amount of debt that may doom it. And that prospect was unthinkable to Wagner, his friends say.

�With the people who depended on him, with the people he considered his family, when he saw the writing on the wall I think it became too much,� Belardi said. 

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To see more of The Philadelphia Inquirer, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.philly.com
© 1999, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
 
 
Also See Hostmark Awarded Management Contract for Gunter Hotel in San Antonio / May 1999 
Oaktree Capital Management and Hostmark Turnaround the Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, Wisconsin / Sept 1999 

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