THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 3, 1995 TAG: 9510030256
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: EDENTON LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
In death as in life, Emmett Hofler Wiggins will continue to be a colorful character in Edenton.
Wiggins died at 74 Saturday in Chowan County Hospital. He leaves conspicuous if controversial marks on the community where he lived for most of his life. He had been ill for several weeks with an undisclosed illness.
``The phone's been ringing all morning about Mr. Wiggins' property,'' Anne-Marie Kelly, Edenton's town manager, said Monday. ``I think this is going to be very complicated.''
Wiggins spent a long, bold life as a World War II Marine, an aviator, a deep-sea diver, a marine salvage entrepreneur, and a man with a knack for acquiring unusual possessions.
There was, of course, ``The Lighthouse,'' Wiggins' home a short distance up a creek from the elegant downtown Edenton waterfront.
``The Lighthouse'' is an 1887 U.S. navigational relic that the town of Plymouth hopes to get back as an historic artifact because the old structure once marked the mouth of the Roanoke River east of Plymouth at Albemarle Sound.
Wiggins bought the lighthouse in 1955 after it was replaced by a more modern buoy. He towed it on a barge to Edenton, and soon converted it into a residence that clashed resoundingly with some of Chowan County's pre-colonial decor.
When the mood was upon him, Wiggins put bright colored bulbs in the squatty lighthouse tower, but the illumination was not always viewed with approval by townsfolk.
The yard around the beacon-home has for years been a magnificent clutter of Wiggins' cherished acquisitions: A beautiful and out-of-place little silver Luscombe monoplane that Wiggins used to fly on scouting trips for loggers; a 50-year old Chris-Craft Catalina motor yacht that awaited restoration at Wiggins' pleasure; monstrous winches and lifting machinery he once used as a salvor, a couple of vintage Lincoln town cars . . .
Close to the creek bank in front of The Lighthouse are huge plinths of white marble that Wiggins brought up years ago from a sunken freighter off the Outer Banks. Wiggins never decided to build a local Parthenon.
Finally, and of particular interest to Edenton's purists, there is a venerable 100-foot tugboat called The Maryland that Wiggins used in his sea-salvage business.
The last time Wiggins sailed into Edenton Bay with each of Maryland's six barrel-sized diesel cylinders booming like bass drums, he moored the old tug not far from the historic town docks. The tug is still there, jarring local sensibilities.
``And there are several of Mr. Wiggins' barges that will also have to be moved,'' said Kelly.
Chowan County Manager Cliff Copeland, who also has had his disputes with Wiggins over some Rocky Hock land that Wiggins claimed, took time out to go to the funeral at 2 p.m. Monday at Evans Funeral Home in Edenton. Wiggins was buried with full Masonic rites at a family cemetery in Gates County.
``Emmett was a real hero to some folks,'' said Copeland.
``Once when an oil barge caught fire in Albemarle Sound, nobody would go near it,'' Copeland recalled, ``But Emmett took his tugboat and went alongside the blazing barge and rescued the crew.
``Another time, a lady went through the ice during a bad winter here on the waterfront and Emmett crawled out on his stomach and rescued her,'' Copeland said.
Wiggins in recent years discussed turning over the lighthouse to a Washington County museum on the Roanoke River waterfront at Plymouth.
``I want Plymouth to have the lighthouse,'' Wiggins said in February in a discussion with Patricia Monte, the Washington County museum curator.
But it soon developed that Wiggins wanted to put the lighthouse on a barge - ``or a ferryboat'' - and go on a continuing tour of waterfront cities as a floating historic exhibit.
Then, somehow, the deal began to drift toward clearing up Wiggins' disputed land titles in Rocky Hock in exchange for deeding the lighthouse over to Plymouth.
``The might be hard to work out,'' said Monte at the time.
Wiggins is survived by a son, Jerry Calhoun of Washington, N.C., and a granddaughter, Chastity Calhoun, also of Washington. by CNB