Valerie Diffey Wiggins

Valerie Diffey Wiggins, 89, died on December 25, 2025, at The Arbor in Ridgeland, MS. Visitation will be held at Lakewood Funeral Home, 6011 Clinton Blvd, Jackson, Mississippi, on January 3, 2026, from 9:30 am to 10:30 am. A Celebration of Life will follow at 10:30 am at the same location. The Committal Service will take place at Lakewood Memorial Park. Mrs. Wiggins was a member of Morrison Heights Baptist Church in Clinton, where she belonged to the Joy Sunday School class.

Mrs. Wiggins was born on July 31, 1936, at home in Humphreys County, to Thomas and Myrtle Musgrove Diffey. She graduated from Catchings High School in Delta City, Mississippi, and continued her education at Hinds Junior College, graduating with honors in 1955. At Hinds, she was a football cheerleader and made the trip to Pasadena in 1954 when the Hinds Eagles won the Junior Rose Bowl by beating El Camino. She worked several years as a legal secretary, then returned to school at Mississippi College, where she received a BS in education in 1970, and later an MS in education, and a specialist degree in education and administration, graduating with honors. She was a member of Alpha Chi and Kappa Delta Pi honor societies at Mississippi College. She also carried memberships in the Mississippi Association of Elementary School Principals and in the Mississippi Association of School Administrators.

She was married in 1955 to her husband and her motivator in life, Isiac Wiggins. They lived in Jackson for eight years, Raymond for ten years, then in 1973 moved to Clinton. Mrs. Wiggins worked as a legal secretary for eight years. Her teaching career began in 1970 in private school. Then in the fall of 1971, she was employed by the Clinton Public School District as a second-grade teacher at Clinton Park School. She spent the next twenty-nine years at Clinton Park, five years as a second-grade teacher, four as an administrative assistant and assistant principal, then twenty years as principal. She was always proud to be associated with the Clinton Public School District, and this made her decision to retire in 2000 very difficult.

Her survivors are her daughter, Kimberly Atwood and her husband, Marc, of Clinton, and her son, Todd Wiggins of Brandon. Also two granddaughters, the joy of her retirement years, Kaitlin Oliver and her husband James, and their children, Hallie and Beau and Kara Atwood of Clinton, and her sister Gail Keith, Oxford.

She is preceded in death by siblings, T.G. Diffey, Marlene Hairston, Pat Diffey, and Glen Diffey.