By the family

March 31, 2026: Robert M. Riggs, age 92, died peacefully at home in the Village of Bronxville, New York, on March 16, 2026. He was born in White Plains on May 30, 1933, and his family moved to Bronxville in 1937. He and his sister Meredith grew up in the oldest house in Bronxville, built in 1812. One of his favorite stories to tell was about walking up White Plains Road to get fresh milk from the neighbor’s cow three times a week, a testament to the rural character of Bronxville in the 1940s.

He attended Bronxville Public School from Kindergarten through 12th grade, graduating in 1951. Although known as Bob to many of his friends, the nickname “Speed” arose from his time on the Bronxville High School cross-country team and followed him to Amherst College. He majored in History at Amherst, wrote a senior thesis about King Henry VIII, and graduated in 1955.

He served in the United States Air Force for three years, attaining the rank of captain, as a pilot of a B-47 Strategic Air Command jet bomber based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with stints in Texas, California, and the U.K. After attaining a law degree from Columbia University, he practiced corporate and securities law for 45 years at the Wall Street firm of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn. He served on the firm’s management committee and was chair of the Corporate and Securities Department for many years.

In 1967, mutual friends set him up on a blind date with Wendy Laws, who had recently finished her Master’s Degree in Nursing at NYU. Six months later they were married on August 12, 1967, at a beautiful outdoor ceremony in Montreal. After outgrowing a small basement apartment in Soho with their first daughter, they bought an old stone house in Bronxville, where they have lived ever since.

Devoted to the Village of Bronxville, Riggs volunteered as Village Legal Counsel from 1978 to 1980 and served as a trustee of the Village from 1988 to 1993. He served as co-chair of the Bronxville Centennial in 1998, and co-founded the Bronxville Historical Conservancy that same year. He served on the Board of Directors of Sarah Lawrence College for many years, and was named Chair of the Board in 2004. 

In 2014, he served as Grand Marshal of Bronxville’s Memorial Day parade, which he seldom missed throughout his life, as he always considered it to be a town celebration of his birthday on May 30. In the late 1970s he helped teach a class at the Bronxville Adult School called “Cooking for Men, by Men.” He was known for his appreciation of good food, and more unusually for a man of his era, for his skills as a chef. 

He loved travel, hiking and mountain climbing, tennis and squash, sailing (“on other people’s boats”) and swimming in cold water – “It’s not cold; it’s refreshing!” He was a great reader, especially of history and biographies, and was a member of a men’s book club that met in Manhattan. In recent years, as his eyesight faded, he enjoyed listening to A Gentleman in Moscow and The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder. He also enjoyed hearing old favorites read aloud, including Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick, and poetry by Robert Frost and Seamus Heaney. For decades, he had a season subscription to the New York City Ballet, and he constantly listened to WQXR, with a special appreciation for medieval and baroque music stemming from a college class. He took pride and pleasure in hearing music performed by his four grandchildren. He valued and nurtured friendships from all the different arenas and eras of his life, and it was a great sorrow to him that he had outlived so many of his friends. 

He is survived by Wendy, his loving wife of 58 years, daughters Jennifer Vetter and Sarah Riggs, sons-in-law Paul Vetter and Omar Berrada, grandchildren Julia Riggs Vetter, Milo Robert Vetter, Safira Berrada-Riggs, Layla May Berrada-Riggs, and his beloved sister Meredith, with whom he kept in close touch until the end of his long and full life. 

A memorial service and celebration of life will be held at the Bronxville Reformed Church on Friday, April 10th at 11:00 a.m., followed by a reception in the Edwards Room. Riggs loved bright colors, so he would encourage the wearing of bright colors. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the National Park Foundation, Sarah Lawrence College, or Jansen Hospice.