James Russell Wiggins; Ambassador, Former Editor of Washington Post

James Russell Wiggins, former editor of the Washington Post who served briefly as ambassador to the United Nations, has died at 96.

Wiggins died Sunday at his home in eastern Maine where he had retired after leaving Washington.

Until ill health confined him to his home in July, however, Wiggins worked at the weekly newspaper he bought in 1966 and sold in 1991, the Ellsworth American. He wrote a weekly column and a weekly poem long after giving up the editor and publisher position.

“I know very well if I didn’t have a job, many mornings I would say to hell with it and just stay in bed,” he told The Times last year.

Known in the small town as “the Energizer Editor who just keeps going and going,” Wiggins felt a structured workday contributed to his longevity. “Routine is the salvation for old age,” he said.

It did not matter to him that the Ellsworth American lacked the clout of the Washington Post that he helped shape. “Working for a newspaper of any size is fun,” he told a Times reporter last year.

Alan Baker, the friend who had bought the Ellsworth American from Wiggins but continued to employ him, said at his death: “Russell had a contagious enthusiasm for everything he encountered and read. He was an endless optimist about human nature, interested in everyone he met, whether young or old.”

Wiggins’ newspaper career began in 1922 when he joined his hometown paper, the Rock County Star, after he graduated from high school in Luverne, Minn. He bought the paper when he was 22.

Wiggins later worked for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch, where he rose to managing editor. After serving in the Army Air Corps Intelligence Division during World War II, and working a year as assistant to New York Times publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger, Wiggins joined the Washington Post.

He spent 22 years at the Post, rising to executive editor in 1955 and editor and executive vice president in 1960. Wiggins was the last Washington Post editor to oversee both the newspaper’s news and editorial departments. Benjamin Bradlee succeeded him in the news department and Philip Geyelin took over the editorial department.

“He cared about quality, and he had righteous indignation,” said Katharine Graham, former publisher of the Post and current chairwoman of the executive committee of the Washington Post Co. “He edited the paper when it didn’t have the resources it later did. He made it matter. He put it on the map.”

During his long newspaper career, Wiggins headed the American Society of Newspaper Editors and the Gridiron Club of Washington.

After retiring from the paper in 1968, he accepted an appointment as ambassador to the United Nations for the final months of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration.

Wiggins married Mabel Preston in 1923. They had four children. His wife died in 1990.

Wiggins is survived by a daughter, Patricia Schroth, 10 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.