Carl “Cully” Wagener loved people, and people loved him.

The longtime St. Paul resident and businessman died Wednesday at the age of 103. Wagener owned and operated Wagener’s Midway Typewriter Exchange on Snelling Avenue for over 30 years.

“He had a wonderful sense of humor,” said his son, Kurt Wagener, 75, of Hudson, Wis. “He loved people and they liked him. It was a natural thing.”

His friend Ed Molitor, 73, of Mound met Wagener when he sold him ads in a local newspaper.

“He was always full of jokes,” Molitor said. “When he was older, he would volunteer at the hospital and say, ‘I have to go take care of the old people.'”

Wagener, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1914, was the son of immigrant Germans who moved to St. Paul when he was a child, traveling by horse and wagon.

The youngest of three, Wagener helped his parents run a farm in Battle Creek and delivered eggs after school. As a teen, he worked at the St. Paul’s farmer’s market.

When World War II began, Wagener enlisted in the Army. He served stateside, working in the Pentagon at one time, his son said.

Wagener and his wife, Gladys, had two children, Kurt and JoAnn, seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren. They lived in the Frogtown neighborhood and attended the House of Hope Presbyterian Church for many years, his son said.

Wagener was a longtime member of the Osman Shriners Temple, the National Office of Machine Dealers Association and the Midway Lions Club.

He was an accomplished salesman, peddling his typewriters to school districts and winning awards such as all-expense paid trips to South America, Europe, Scandinavia and Japan.

At the age of 94, he still loved to talk shop and was intrigued when Pioneer Press columnist Joe Soucheray wrote about an Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter he had received as a gift from Wagener’s store years before.

“I’m sure your portable Olivetti was purchased from me at Wagener’s Midway Typewriter Exchange,” he told Soucheray in a typed letter in 2009. “If you still had the Lettera portable, I would be honored to overhaul it for you at no charge.”

From horse and wagon to the computer age, Wagener kept up with the times — he took a class on astronomy at age 90 — even if he yearned for simpler days and hand-typed letters.

“When I tell the younger people I sold typewriters they ask, ‘What’s a typewriter?’ he told Soucheray. “Sad, isn’t it?”

Kurt Wagener said his father was patient “like a saint” as a father and was young at heart.

“He had a spring in his step, even at his 100th birthday party,” he said.

Wagener’s wife preceded him in death. He spent his retirement years in Sarasota, Fla., and in Hudson near his son, and finally at the New Perspectives Home in Roseville.

He will be laid to rest next to his wife at the Fort Snelling National Cemetery. A memorial service will be 11 a.m. April 14 at the Cremation Society of Minnesota.