But I wasn t comfortable with that. Phil Graham, according to his wife, said Wiggins accomplished much with sheer will. In later years, tension developed between Wiggins and other Washington Post staffers over his editorial support of the Vietnam War. He was so steadfast in his support of the war, in fact, that Lyndon Johnson once remarked that one of Wiggins editorials was worth as much as a division in Vietnam. A larger paper, like the Post or the Pioneer Press , has a readership that skips around.
Readers pick and choose, and the stories have to reflect that.
His life has included the sorrows of time, of course. He has outlived three of his four children. And he mourns the loss of Mabel, his wife of 67 years, who died in 1990 at their farm home in Brooklin, Maine. The reach of his family is long, however. He visits relatives in Arizona during winter months, and his hometown honored him by naming him to the Rock County Hall of Fame, where he s listed with novelist Frederick Manfred, photographer Jim Brandenburg and radio personality Cedric Adams.