Russ Wiggins never really retired from newspapering

We drove two hours through snow flurries till we saw the cheery lights of Blue Hill, where we joined a solemn crowd at a local church.

I tend to avoid funerals and memorials but this one was different. This Nov. 22 gathering was to honor journalist James Russell Wiggins, who would have been 97 on Dec. 4. He planned his own funeral; it was prompt, succinct and memorable, the way he was in life.

He had once walked out of that same Congregational church in protest of the pastor Rob McCall’s politics. McCall told those who came to celebrate Wiggins’ life that the great editor took him to lunch and talked about separation of church and state.

Wiggins wasn’t a “former editor,” either. At his death he was still an editor at the weekly Ellsworth American, a paper he made excellent the way he earlier turned around The Washington Post and “retiring.”

He was a member of the working press until the end, writing his “Fenceviewer” column.

I first met Wiggins in the mid-1970s when I edited a small monthly for Maine’s Indian tribes called Wabanaki Alliance. I would drive from Old Town to The Ellsworth American to have the paper printed, and Wiggins would say “Here comes my Indian fighter,” whatever he meant by that.

He thought I did OK with the paper, and would grab a copy off his press. He took me to lunch, and I learned that, at least for someone in his late 20s, you listened to Wiggins more than anything else. But what lectures: no-nonsense, straight-ahead advice, solid opinions. An acquaintance with Wiggins was for me a reminder that I made the right choice in choosing an unpredictable, insecure career in journalism. Several times he called on me to cover something for the American.

I disagreed with Wiggins on his fierce support for the Vietnam War, but I couldn’t out-debate him. No use arguing with this powerhouse of well-informed opinion, but I found much to gain by listening. He was a liberal editorial writer in most respects, and as an individual, unstintingly generous. In 1983, when I was writing for the Waterville Morning Sentinel, I asked if he would come speak to the Maine Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He made the long drive from Ellsworth to Augusta for a lively discussion. He was a formidable fixture at Maine Press Association functions, an elder statesman who remained humble, approachable. His remarks were eloquent and laced with wit and contagious enthusiasm for the profession.

Several years ago I was walking on Bay View Street in Camden when I saw Wiggins and Walter Cronkite, headed for a bookstore where Cronkite was going to autograph books. Wiggins introduced me as a friend and fellow journalist. Such company I was in; it went right to my head.

Wiggins wrote clearly, forcefully and convincingly about the things he believed in, such as freedom of the press and freedom of speech – respectful of opposing views but unlikely to be unintimidated by them. Wiggins could think on his feet and probably standing on his head, if he had wanted to. He could think out loud, his ideas fully articulated and in casual circumstances, punctuated by “Jesus” and “hell,” as in, “Jesus, what the hell did they think they were doing?”

His passion was journalism, but he loved his family intensely – his wife Mabel died a decade ago – and he had a passion for sailing, gardening, singing and books. He read widely and deeply and regularly. He loved to engage people in serious conversation. As his friend and neighbor E.B. White once pointed out, he always seemed to smile, and look like he knew something you didn’t. In my case, that fact would never be in doubt.

At my interview with Wiggins last March 15, a sunny day full of promise, he said he was about to set up round-the-clock home care. “I have two people but that isn’t enough. I’m setting up now so somebody is always there. Well, you know, just realistically … my wife’s cousin, just my age, fell and broke her hip. Jesus. Older people, that’s a risk you take.”

Wiggins, who for years owned and raced a Friendship Sloop, gave up sailing alone. “I finally realized that a minor accident can be fatal. A girl – a woman who works for me here, her husband a couple of years ago was tending his bought down here, in the Naskeag, he slipped and fell overboard. By Jesus he was 45 minutes in the water, and that water is cold.”

He wrote poems, both for The Ellsworth American and for his Christmas cards, which I have kept over the years. Some might say doggerel, but it’s the lighter side of the editor’s pen. A recent Christmas card included a black-and-white photo of two great grandchildren, and a poem including this verse:

Each generation thus is blest

With remnants of a distant guest

Who trod the paths they now will tread

To leave their traits on a distant dead

On that March day I last saw Wiggins, he insisted on sharing his lunch with me, and said to come visit him again. I didn’t. Perhaps I thought he would simply go on as usual, indefinitely. The church service ended with 12-year-old Kelsey Hudson playing “Ashokan Farewell,” a tune Wiggins liked.

Wiggins, who went to work right out of high school, had an appetite for learning, for ideas, for making society work. He had faith in our potential to overcome the worst in our nature. He showed strength in facing age, loss and a world that – in his lifetime – traveled from telegraph to World Wide Web, from streetcar to space shuttle.

He was a hell of a journalist, too.

Free-lance writer Steve Cartwright lives in Waldoboro.