Final Salute

Charles Wiggins lived through much in his nearly 104 years: the Spanish flu, the Great Depression, a bout with rheumatic fever, and even the Jim Crow South.

The United States joined the First World War only months before he was born — he would go on to serve in the second.

“God has been walking beside me and kept me here,” said Mr. Wiggins, looking back on his life during a 2019 video interview with writer and historian Alonna Carter.

Mr. Wiggins, known affectionately as “Uncle Charlie” to most, died Aug. 28 of congestive heart failure at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in O’Hara.

The longtime Wilkinsburg resident was buried Wednesday, on what would have been his 104th birthday.

“Mr. Wiggins conquered much adversity in his life,” said Ronald B. Saunders, president of the Edna B. McKenzie Pittsburgh Branch of ASALH — the Association for the Study of African American Life and History — where Mr. Wiggins was an active member.

“He was a consummate gentleman, and he was the personification of goodness,” Mr. Saunders said. “His mode of behavior cut through all demographics, all ages and all generations.”

Mr. Wiggins served as both an educator and a student at the organization, founded only two years before his birth. Members on Friday celebrated 106 years of ASALH.

“Mr. Wiggins and the ASALH — they come from the same vein,” Mr. Saunders said. “He was a great, great supporter of our programs. We honored him and other African Americans from many different theaters of war. He served on discussion panels and he was a great lover of history.”

Mr. Wiggins was born in Union Springs, Ala., the youngest of six children.

After his mother died when he was just 2, Mr. Wiggins and his siblings went to live on their grandparents’ horse farm, while their father, Graff Wiggins, established himself in Pittsburgh’s Hill District.

“He sent for us to come to Pittsburgh,” Mr. Wiggins said of his father in the 2019 video, which ASALH officials hope will be included in the Library of Congress. “He had prepared a place for us.”

Pittsburgh — and its very different climate — held surprises for the youngster.

Snow, he said, “was a big mystery to me.”

“I saw snow outside when the sun was shining and it reminded me of diamonds flickering. It was amazing to me — I didn’t know what it was,” he said.

Mr. Wiggins graduated in 1937 from Schenley High School, and two years later he married Martha Scott. Mrs. Wiggins died in 2003.

In 1944, during World War II, Mr. Wiggins was drafted into the Navy.

“We got shipped to Great Lakes, Ill. — that’s where we got our training,” he recalled in an interview with Chris Moore for WQED-TV last year.

Mr. Wiggins was assigned to an integrated Seabees (Navy Construction Battalion) unit at a submarine base in Groton, Conn., where he contracted rheumatic fever.

“I recovered very quickly,” he told Mr. Moore.

Afterward, Mr. Wiggins was transferred to a military hospital in Dublin, Ga., where he served until 1946 as a medic for wounded soldiers and sailors.

At the hospital, Mr. Wiggins said he was warned to be careful about venturing into the segregated city.

“That’s where I ran into discrimination,” Mr. Wiggins said in the WQED interview. “I went into a store to get a sandwich — I had to go around the back!”

After the war, he returned to Pittsburgh and used the G.I. Bill to attend the Western Pennsylvania Horological Institute, where he earned a degree in 1948 in watch and clock making.

Although he was the first Black man to graduate from the North Side school, discrimination kept him from finding work at local department stores or other businesses, Mr. Wiggins said.

“There were no Black watchmakers in Pittsburgh at the time — I was the first,” he recalled. “But I couldn’t advance with it, because they wouldn’t accept me.”

Instead, Mr. Wiggins worked for 33 years as a clerk at the U.S. Postal Service, where he fashioned a bench that allowed him to work on watches and clocks during his downtime.

“I worked a number of years that way,” said Mr. Wiggins, who also had a shop at his home.

When he became a centenarian in 2017, the Pittsburgh Steelers honored him for his birthday and military service with a No. 100 jersey, presented by Alejandro Villanueva, an Army veteran who was playing for the Steelers at the time.

Mr. Wiggins wore his personalized jersey two years later to announce the Steelers’ fourth-round draft pick, University of Kentucky running back Benny Snell Jr.

“A limo picked him up, and he was on national TV,” Mr. Saunders, the historical association president, said. “He was so excited about that.”

Mr. Wiggins was a founder of a sportsman’s club in Butler County, and he was a student of history who was ever ready for a spirited debate, said his nieces, Nancy King, of Washington, D.C., and Carol Wiggins Koshal, of Penn Hills.

“He was a historian who always stayed abreast of current events,” Ms. King said. “We would discuss policy and ideas, and I always enjoyed talking to him, because he would educate me.”

“He had a thirst for knowledge,” Ms. Wiggins Koshal agreed. “And I don’t think he ever held a grudge. Uncle Charlie’s tolerance level was extremely high — he was patient and forgiving.”

“When he came into a room, he lit it up,” Mr. Saunders recalled. “I never heard him say a bad word about anyone. He would share stories with the other men — he had so much vitality and so much energy. Mr. Wiggins was like the professor emeritus of our group.”

His secret to a long and happy life was perhaps best expressed by Mr. Wiggins himself, when he shared some pearls of wisdom in the WQED interview.

“We have to take what we get here and make a good life out of what we receive,” he said. “So, don’t give in, don’t give up.”

Along with his nieces, Mr. Wiggins is survived by a son, Charles Graff Wiggins, of Erie, Pa.

Janice Crompton: jcrompton@post-gazette.com.

First Published September 12, 2021, 6:00am