Marion Bigelow Higgins and Her Son Horace Marion Bigelow Higgins, pictured here with her son Horace, was born in 1893 and is a "supercentenarian." She is one of 20 Americans known to be 110 years old or older, and is part of an aging study begun by the Gerontology Research Group. Higgins has 24-hour live-in care at her home in Seal Beach, Calif., but says she enjoys good health -- "generally speaking." Her 82-year-old son Horace appears to be following in her footsteps -- he plays tennis three times a week.
Credit: Neenah Ellis, NPR

The Bear Story: A Classic Myth of Innocence

    From the time I was a young boy, my aunts, uncles and my father told me fantastic stories about their grandfather Higgins. Dwight Noble Higgins was born in 1863 in Orwell, Vermont. As a young man Dwight moved first to Montana where he lived near and befriended the Lakota Sioux Indians that had only a few years before wiped out General Custer's troops at the Battle of Little Big Horn. Next he moved to a remote logging camp in Western Idaho where he ran a tavern and operated a ferry. In the latter part of his life great-grandpa Higgins relocated to Southern California and so went from one coast of the United States to the other. During the years he lived in Idaho, I was told by my elders, Dwight Noble Higgins owned a pet bear. I heard many wonderful stories about the bear. How he liked to drink beer and would put his paw on the shoulders of great-grandpa's customers at the tavern and get them to buy him a tall frosty one. Once a man came by the ferry and wanted to buy the bear for his traveling circus. Reluctantly, Dwight sold his friend to the man and helped him chain the bear into a wagon. A few days later, however, the bear returned on its own to the ferry having escaped from the circus. Another story recounted to me was when my great-grandfather became very sick, so ill in fact, that he could not care for the bear and it was starving. Some of the town's folk decided to put the bear down to keep it from dying a slow, painful death. Just as they were going into the pen where the bear was kept and were ready to take aim, Dwight Noble Higgins managed to get himself up and outside in time to stop the mercy killing. He said, “please don't shoot my friend.”

I grew up enjoying these compelling family stories very much and took delight in passing them down to my children. Several years ago, one of my aunts, who had told me these stories, asked me if I would drive her down to Leisure World (a retirement community in Southern California). She wanted to visit her 103 year old aunt (my great-aunt) Marion Higgins, the widow of Dwight Noble Higgins' oldest son. I said, “sure” and was excited to do so as I had heard that aunt Marion still had a very “sharp” memory. It was a genealogist's dream to talk to a family member 103 years old! I carefully prepared a list of questions I wanted to ask her about my great-grandparents whom she had lived near both in Idaho and then later in Southern California. She answered all my questions very thoroughly and provided some very interesting insights from a daughter-in-law's point of view about having married into the Higgins family. The last question on my list was, "Aunt Marion, what can you tell me about grand-pa Higgins' pet bear?" She paused and looked at me with a confused expression, then uttered to my complete shock, "What bear? I don't remember any bear." All attempts at jogging a memory of her father-in-law's pet bear (a hard thing to forget) were unsuccessful.

Suddenly a flash of insight came to me…a significant moment of clarity. I transformed in an instant from Mike Riggs,the youngster who was so eager to hear family stories, to Michael S. Riggs, the Social Scientist who should have known better than to uncritically except an unverified oral tradition. As I thought more about it, I remembered other stories I was told about Dwight Noble Higgins, such as his love of his grand children and how he liked to tell them stories and joke around with them when they were children. As children, my father and his siblings had innocently believed the bear stories their grandfather had told them to be true. As they grew to be adults, they simply passed them on to the next generation and the myth was in danger of surviving yet onto the next. This is a classic example of a "myth of innocence." It was not told to harm anyone, it was intended to amuse grandchildren and teach them about friendship and loyalty. Understanding stories as myth does not have to devalue the lesson being taught. Knowingly portraying fiction as fact cheapens the validity, and actually detracts from, the moral of the story.

Taken From: Michael S. Riggs, "Benign Voyeur: Twenty Four Years of Third Party Observations On the Ever Changing Community of Christ Church," John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, 2003, pp. 4-5.