Friends remember Linda Wiggin
Toolbox
By Cristina Kumka Staff Writer - Published: December 7, 2008
POULTNEY — When Rena Lingstrom first saw 33-year-old Linda Lee Wiggin step up to the mic clad in black tights and a purple charmeuse shirt, she says it was as if lightning had flashed in the room.
Wiggin's red lipstick gleamed as she prepared to read one of her poems at the Provincetown hotspot, Lingstrom recalled.
"She scared me … and also excited me," said Lingstrom, a longtime friend who met Wiggin in the Massachusetts tourist town in the early 1990s.
Their love of poetry and mutual appreciation for coffee shop talk was the glue that held their friendship together, Lingstrom said.
"It was an incredible 16-year-long conversation we had," she said, as her eyes welled with tears. "It's still going on as far as I'm concerned."
Wiggin's loved ones recollected other stimulating conversations with the 49-year-old writer and professor at her funeral at the Roberts-Aubin Funeral Home in Poultney.
Wiggin, an aura-photography expert and instructor of public speaking and writing composition at Castleton State College, died earlier this month after she was slain in her home.
Police have charged her sometimes boyfriend, David Denny, 41, of Rutland with second-degree murder in her death.
Friends and family members who remembered Wiggin's life didn't dwell on how she died or at whose hand. They, instead, told stories that shed insight into the kind of woman she was before she met her alleged attacker.
Several black-and-white photos of Wiggin with her husband Michael Torre's arm wrapped around her before he died in 2003, graced the shelves of the funeral home.
Tarot cards, rocks and other objects of spiritual insight that belonged to Wiggin, a self-described writer, psychic, feminist and practicing witch, rested on tables next to a podium speakers used to memorialize her life.
"To Linda, I was 'El Grande,'" said a friend who identified himself as Richard. "No one is going to call me that again."
One of Wiggin's tenants said she bonded with her landlord during recent conversations about "tumultuous relationships."
"She was an aunt, big sister and mother to me," she said. "I used to look up to her, I'm going to miss her very much."
Wiggin, a recovering cancer survivor who moved to Poultney with her husband before his death, was known as a nurturing woman with eclectic taste and an indomitable "spirit of defiance," another friend said.
"Whenever she hung up the phone, she told me she loved me," said Lingstrom. "I love you too, Linda."
A published writer and poet, Wiggin's work was published in "The Boston Globe," "IN Boston" and "Provincetown Magazine."
A poem included in her 1994 book entitled "Deed To My Blood" revealed a foreboding message.
"Now that you have crossed over, and so have I, to that place in ourselves where words are only robbers of any little peace we have gained," Wiggin wrote.
"I send up a prayer to purge the last of this from my body in the still, dark hours to come. For part of my life, parts of my blood, sing to me softly. My blood still belongs to you."
Donations in the memory of Linda L. Wiggin may be sent to the Rutland County Women's Network and Shelter, P.O. Box 313, Rutland, VT 05702 or to the Community Cancer Center, 160 Allen Street, Rutland, VT 05701.
Contact Cristina Kumka at cristina.kumka@rutlandherald.com.
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