Frederick Benjamin "Fred" Higgins
Class of 1954
 

Dr. Frederick Benjamin Higgins Jr. died on Saturday, Sept. 13, 2003, following a battle with lung cancer on Virginia’s Eastern Shore in Onancock.

Fred was born in Portsmouth on Sept. 28, 1936; he was the only surviving child of the late Frederick B. Higgins Sr. and Carol Taylor Higgins of Virginia Beach. His mother Carol left the family when Fred Jr. was at a very young age, so his father and grandparents, William Henry Higgins and Eveline Saulstron Higgins in Cradock, Va., raised him. His father remarried the only mother he ever knew and loved, Ethel Fortune (Higgins) Smith. Fred Jr. married Nancy Jane Boothe Higgins, a Cradock High School 1957 graduate in 1958 and they had two children, William Boothe Higgins and Rebecca Anne Higgins. He was divorced from Nancy in 1992 and remarried Betsi Everitt Higgins the same year. Betsi was his best friend who fought valiantly by his side during his battle with cancer that began right after Christmas 2002.

Fred is survived by his wife, Betsi Higgins; his two children, Boothe and Becky; his mother and stepfather, Ethel and Louis Smith; five grandchildren, Lawrence Boothe Higgins, Audrey Mae Higgins, Zachary Louis Higgins, Maxwell Dene Higgins and Nicholas Raymond Lanahan; as well as extended family members and friends too many to mention.