Services held for D-Day veteran
A celebration of life for Purple Heart recipient Sir Norman Chester Riggsby was held Saturday, February 19, at Medina United Methodist Church, where a Montrerey Oak tree had been planted in his honor in late 2020.
The ceremony included testimonies from family and friends, who all shared stories about how Norman touched their lives. The stories covered his sense of humor and warmth, his wartime bravery, perseverance, love of Ham Radio, and even his unique style of driving. One constant in the stories was his love for deer, which he fed every morning on his ranch in Medina.
Riggsby was born June 9, 1925, the second of four boys to Chester Aaron Riggsby and Helen Audrey Riggsby. As a teenager, he had a 20-mile paper route.
“I remember that Sunday, December 7th, 1941,” Riggsby recalled in a piece available in full at http://www.dclarkeevans.com/portfolio/riggsby-norm-june-6-1944-omaha-beach. “Delivered my morning route. When I got back, my bosses were waiting for me. I had to run the route again with the “EXTRA PEARL HARBOR BOMBED!”
Drafted out of high school at the age of 17, Rigsby obtained a GED instead of completing his senior year. Three days before his 19th birthday, he landed on Omaha Beach as part of the third wave.
“We had no idea what we were getting into,” he recalled in the aforementioned piece. The Battleship Texas was firing over our heads into those bunkers on the beach while we were waiting to disembark. Man, was it noisy!”
After being hit with shrapnel, Riggsby spent three days in an abandoned bunker that had been turned into an aid station before returning to battle, wounded again in the Battle of St. Lo after nearly being cut in two by a Tiger tank shell. That injury resulted in a severe concussion and three-week coma.
“I was lucky I survived,” he said in his D. Clarke Evans piece.
Unable to return to battle, Riggsby was made a special MP, assigned to rounding up Nazis before they could escape France. He would also go on to be a guard at the Nuremberg trials. At one point in his career he also escorted General Patton through Paris.
In a 70-minute interview with the World War II Museum of New Orleans, Riggsby said the most memorable part of the war was getting to see the world.
"I went over and saw all those countries I would never have seen,” he said in that interview. “And I saw a lot of them. I was in Scotland and Wales and England and Ireland, all those. France, Germany. I didn't get to Spain. I did get to Italy, though. I went to R&R, which is rest, out in the Riviera. They sent me out there for rest. From there, we went to Italy. Rome, I've been to Rome. So, I got around a little bit."
That full interview is available at https://www.banderabulletin.com/article/obituaries/norman-chester-riggsby.
After the war, Riggsby worked as a civilian contractor at the Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake. In 1955, he moved to Houston to finish his Electrical Engineering degree at the University of Houston while working at Schlumberger. He retired from Schlumberger in the mid 1970’s and relocated to Medina, where he designed and built a house on a ranch.
He is preceded in death by his parents Chester Aaron Riggsby and Helen Audrey Riggsby, his brothers William and Roger Riggsby.
He is survived by his brother Caryl Riggsby of Holmen, WI ; daughter Audrey (Tommy) Thompson of Houston, TX; daughter Debbie (Joseph) Schwan of Gypsum, CO; son Paul (Loretta) Riggsby of Houston, TX; granddaughter Michelle (Jason) Ferrell of Houston; grandson Trey (Lauren) of Houston, TX; Nolan Schwan of Gypsum; CO, Kelsie (Jeremy) Irish of Wesley Chapel, FL; Kendall Riggsby of Bowling Green, KY; Connor Riggsby of Houston, TX; great-granddaughter, Brooke Ferrell; great-grandson, Brayden Ferrell and a host of friends.