Warren Wiggins, Peace Corps catalyst

Warren W. Wiggins, 84, the major architect and organizer of the Peace Corps who wrote the basic philosophical document that shaped its mission, died of atypical Parkinson's syndrome Friday at his home in Haymarket, Va.

Mr. Wiggins became a leader of the high-profile agency in its earliest years. In 1961, he was an unknown foreign-policy adviser whose brief paper, "The Towering Task," landed in the lap of the Peace Corps' first director, Sargent Shriver, just as he was trying to figure out how to turn President John F. Kennedy's campaign promise into a working federal department.

The response to it became legendary in the agency as "the midnight ride of Warren Wiggins." Shriver, burrowing through correspondence shortly after midnight on Feb. 6, 1961, was electrified by the treatise, which urged the agency to act boldly. A small agency was more likely to fail because its projects would not be consequential enough, Mr. Wiggins wrote. Using specific examples, with a proposed staff size and budget, Mr. Wiggins suggested that Kennedy act through an executive order for the quickest start.

Shriver fired off a telegram at 3 a.m., directing Mr. Wiggins to appear that morning at the Mayflower Hotel, where he had his office.

When Mr. Wiggins arrived, he was astonished to find his exposition had been copied and distributed to Shriver's task force. According to the 1994 work A History of National Service in America, Shriver ordered everyone to read the paper, then said it came closer to expressing his views than anything he had seen.

"Shriver from the beginning saw him as someone who had the spirit of moving big and fast," former Sen. Harris Wofford (D., Pa.), who was there, said in an interview. "The Peace Corps, small and symbolic, might be good public relations, but a Peace Corps that was large and had a major impact on problems in other countries could transform the economic development of the world."

At the time, Mr. Wiggins was a 38-year-old deputy director of Far East operations in the International Cooperation Administration, but "totally dissatisfied with the manner in which American overseas programs were run," wrote John Coyne, a historian of the Peace Corps.

Mr. Wiggins never went back to the ICA. Three weeks later, the Peace Corps was born, by executive order.

Mr. Wiggins, a native of Phoenix, left the University of Colorado to serve in the Army Air Forces during World War II. He flew transport planes "over the Hump" in the China-India-Burma theater and received a Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, he finished college in Colorado, then received a master's degree in economics from Harvard University in 1949.

Mr. Wiggins served as deputy director of the Peace Corps. He left in 1967 to form TransCentury, a private firm that ran a job center in the District of Columbia and a remedial education program in New York.

Survivors include his wife of 63 years, Edna Abell Wiggins of Haymarket; six children, Bill Wiggins of Livermore, Colo., Karen Wiggins Dowler of Pacifica, Calif., Lisa Ann Wiggins of Port Angeles, Wash., John Reed Wiggins and David Wiggins, both of Haymarket, and Mark Wiggins of Pacific Grove, Calif.; five grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.