I’d like to talk about my brother Jim. I could probably stay here for about an hour talking about him. I’ll just leave you with one incident. Jim was in the class of 1954. When I was a junior, obviously he was a freshman, two years behind me, and was shocked and amazed that I had never had any past inclination towards singing as member of the esteemed group known as the Krokodiloes. Later in his freshman year and into his early sophomore year, he took me aside and said, “If you can do it, I can do it.” At that time we didn’t have auditions. As Frank said last night, we were taking warm bodies off of the street!  We never knew how many were going to show up at a concert. Discipline was not our strong point. And there’s some question as to whether singing was!  But the one incident that sticks in my mind is we did indeed incorporate him into the Krokodiloes because his body was warm, and he was also a second bass, as was I. He got to, I think the second rehearsal, the first was just sort of mooning about.  At the second rehearsal we introduced a new song and I’ve forgotten what it was, but he said, “How on earth can I sing this?” he whispered in my ear. And I said, “Just follow me.”  I proceeded to miss all the notes!  He said “If that’s what I have to do, I’m certainly in the right place!” And I think before the year was out I wound up following him. Unhappily, Jim died two years ago in the fall of 2004 of cancer after a very successful life in business in Cincinnati. His widow lives in the same community that we do in Florida, and Fred Heller very kindly suggested that she might want to come to this reunion. Unhappily, because of other commitments she couldn’t, but she was very touched by the thought that she would be invited. That’s about all I have to say, thank you very much.

-From Jack Kiggen at the 60th Anniversary Memorial Service

I’d like to add one comment about Jim, who was my classmate and Fred Heller’s. He was a very fine young man and a very distinguished adult. We had a song in those days called, I think, called Stutter. And it was a young man trying to choke out a proposition, a proposal to his loved one. Jim did that solo and when I became engaged in the spring of senior year, the Kroks very kindly came and sang at the engagement party and did that song, and Jim got down on his knees before my to-be-wife and did Stutter and proposed, and my wife turned to me and said, Well I guess we’re official now!

-From Ed Bursk at the 60th Anniversary Memorial Service

James Kiggen ’54 (1932–2004) After graduating in 1958 from Harvard Business School, Jim led a life of family devotion, professional achievements, and civic service. He was named director of Cincinnati Bell in 1983 and was Chairman from 1999 until he retired in 2002. He was a director of Fifth Third Bancorp and the United States Playing Card Company, and chairman and CEO of Xtek Inc., a private Cincinnati-based manufacturing firm. He held leadership positions with more than forty community groups, and in 2002 he and his wife, Ann, received United Way’s de Tocqueville Award for community service and philanthropy. His son, James D. Kiggen Jr., told the Cincinnati Enquirer: “My father was a tremendous loving presence in our lives. He had a wonderful marriage, he was devoted to his children and grandchildren, and he lived every day as an example of strength and humor and accomplishment. I can’t begin to describe how much we will miss him.”