Friends, colleagues reflect on Wiggins’ character

Walter Cronkite, Russ Wiggins’ fellow journalist and sailing companion, learned of his friend’s death as he was preparing Sunday to leave his New York home for a trip out West.

“He was a man of great counsel – a wise man who really fitted that phrase,” Cronkite told the Bangor Daily News in a telephone interview. “He was so fair in everything he did and every judgment he made.”

Wiggins and Cronkite met when both were working in Washington, D.C., in the 1950s. After serving as a wire service reporter in the 1940s, Cronkite was beginning his work in TV news for CBS when Wiggins was a top editor at The Washington Post.

Cronkite noted that Wiggins was politically astute and had a mind keen on analyzing world affairs. “He was a man who looked at our national affairs and our international affairs with great scrutiny,” the renowned television journalist said.

But Cronkite also recalled the more personal side of Wiggins.

“With his sense of humor he could make friends with anyone who might disagree with him,” Cronkite said. “He had an infectious laugh, and there was certainly nothing stuffy about Russ. He and his late wife were a great couple in that regard.”

Wiggins’ humor, intellect and ethical standards were noted repeatedly Sunday as his friends and colleagues offered tributes.

“Russ Wiggins may well have been one of the most universally respected and admired men of our time,” said U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. “It is a testament to his wisdom that throughout his life, Russ Wiggins was able to view both world events and community concerns with equal importance – and make us understand why both were pertinent to out lives.”

Indeed, Mark Woodward, executive editor of the Bangor Daily News, said Wiggins was an “insightful, outspoken and constructive critic of newspapers. He reminded Maine dailies often that they had an obligation to their readers to be complete journalists. Publish the local news, Russ would remind us, but don’t neglect important international events.”

Defense Secretary William Cohen, traveling in Saudi Arabia, said in a statement that he had known Wiggins for more than 30 years.

Wiggins “had the greatest amount of intellectual curiosity and the most energetic interest in finding new ways to think about public issues,” Cohen said. “I greatly enjoyed our regular meetings and conversations over the years, though they invariably ended with Russ recommending three or four very thick books for me to read that he had thoroughly devoured and analyzed.”

U.S. Rep. John Baldacci recalled that visits to Wiggins during Baldacci’s campaigns were “almost like going to the principal’s office.”

“You had to know what you were talking about and be well-briefed,” Baldacci said.

And Stephen Fay, the American’s managing editor, said working with Wiggins was akin to “being a philosophy teacher and right up in the next office is Aristotle.”

Wiggins supposedly retired in the 1960s, when he moved to Maine. But “he probably accomplished more after his first ‘retirement’ at age 65 than most do in a lifetime,” Cohen said.

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe cited those accomplishments, as well as Wiggins’ love of learning and passion for ethical conduct.

“He brought this same professionalism and insight to Maine nearly 35 years ago, when he took the helm of The Ellsworth American and became one of the community’s and Maine’s greatest treasures,” Snowe said.

Alan Baker, publisher of the American, said simply: “Russell Wiggins was not only our mentor and ethical leader but also set the standard by which all of us at The Ellsworth American measure our daily efforts. Even into his 90s, Russell had a contagious and boundless enthusiasm for everything he encountered and read. He was an endless optimist about human nature, interested in everyone he met, whether young or old.”