Mary Mills Riggs

Mary (Mills) Riggs, a Newporter for 60 years, died Friday in Norwalk, Connecticut, after being hospitalized with a severe case of pneumonia. She was 88.

An avid traveler, she saw some of the world with her first husband, a career Navy man, Cmdr. Richard Henry Alsager, and more of it later with her second, Douglas Riggs, a newspaperman (Providence Journal) and travel editor.

But her first love was always her house on Farewell Street -- a large, double, red Colonial (circa 1760), known locally as the first duplex in America -- a plausible but unprovable distinction.

Her own credentials are unassailable. A descendant of Pocahontas and John Rolfe through the Randolphs of Virginia, she counted Thomas Jefferson and five other American presidents on her family tree. She belonged to the Jamestowne Society, the National Society of The Colonial Dames of America, Redwood Library, the Newport Historical Society and other organizations oriented toward the 18th century, her favorite period.

Her father, William Wirt Mills, who was 70 when she was born on Staten Island in 1937, held two important posts in New York City: Commissioner of Plant and Structures and later, under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, President of the New York City Tax Commission. Before that he was night editor of the New York Times.

All that aside, her lifestyle was that of a thoroughly modern woman, at home in the world and with an independent streak, a wicked sense of humor, a smile for the ages, and exquisite taste.

She bought most of her outfits at consignment shops -- and was known as the best-dressed woman in Newport. She rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous -- and never failed to find some reason to compliment a scruffy looking stranger on her appearance. She was a political liberal who teared up whenever she heard "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Above all, she was a social being. Strangers would approach her husband at parties, where she was usually at the center of a group laughing at her (often off-color) jokes and witticisms, and ask, "Is she a movie star?" (No, but she was an extra in several films shot in and around Newport, starting with "The Great Gatsby" in 1971.)

She survived three different and deadly cancers with undiminished humor, but could not escape a long siege by Alzheimer's late in life -- the main reason she and her husband moved last year to BrightView on New Canaan, a senior living center in Norwalk.

Besides her husband, she is survived by a daughter, Leslie Mills Greene of Westport, Connecticut; a son, Eric William Alsager, of Freehold, New Jersey, and five grandchildren. She will be buried in Island Cemetery, Newport. Funeral arrangements are private. Please visit www.Raymond.care to leave an online condolence.