Heiko Wiggers

Heiko Wiggers, 55, of Winston-Salem, NC, passed away early on the morning of Wednesday April 10, 2024. 

Heiko was born in Radevormwald, Germany on July 11, 1968, and at the age of 2, moved to his beloved hometown, Emlichheim, near the border to Holland, where he lived for the rest of his early life. He was 10 when his mother, Inga, remarried and moved to the United States, though he made frequent trips to the U.S. to visit her.  Heiko remained in Germany with his father, Hans, and his cherished grandmother, Aaltin.  Eventually, around age 23, he made the decision to relocate to the U.S., though he made frequent trips back to the Grafschaft Bentheim to visit his family there.  

Heiko was a lifelong lover of languages and ultimately completed a PhD in Germanic Linguistics at the University of Texas in Austin, where he met his wife, Kate.  Kate and Heiko relocated to Winston-Salem when Heiko was offered a position as a professor at Wake Forest University in 2005 where he taught until he medically retired in 2023.

Heiko loved being a professor and loved passing along his enthusiasm for his native language to his students and was particularly proud of his work teaching Business German.  He counted himself lucky to have landed in a department with so many amazing colleagues whom he considered friends.  While he spoke English, German and Dutch with native or near-native fluency, he also spoke Low German, Spanish and French at a very high level and studied dozens and dozens of other languages over his lifetime.  

One of Heiko’s proudest life moments was becoming a father to his sons, Jack and Henry. He was incredibly proud of “surviving” twin parenthood and passing along his extensive expertise in languages and literature to them.  He loved watching his boys grow up and Heiko worked hard to help them become amazing young people with their own individual skills and talents.  

Just a few things Heiko loved besides his family and his academic life: Music of most any kind— playing both guitar and harmonica, and singing, listening to good rock and roll, particularly The Rolling Stones, he loved writing (though not by hand—his handwriting was atrocious!), sharing a good beer with friends, having tons of inside jokes with his wife and kids (those keys…), being an honorary Texan, and sharing funny stories with friends.  He found a late-in-life love for dogs, brought about by adding his two pups, Heidi and Thijs, to the family.  He also made mix tapes that were the stuff of legends— if you were ever the recipient of a Heiko mix, you were lucky indeed. 

Sadly, cancer doesn’t discriminate, even if you are a brilliant linguist with a great life, and he was diagnosed with a biliary duct tumor in April of 2022.  He had every reason to hope that surgery would remove the tumors and he would continue to live a normal life, and for several months, that was the case.  However, in January of 2023, his cancer came back fiercely, and he was given a prognosis of a couple of months at best.  Heiko fought hard and was doing an amazing job at beating back this cancer, surviving far, far longer than anticipated.  Unfortunately, after 16 months of intensive chemotherapy, he developed a rare reaction to one of the drugs and developed sepsis, which ultimately took his life.  

Heiko is survived by his wife of 18 years, Kate McFarland, and his two sons, Jack and Henry Wiggers.  He is also survived by his father, Johannes Wiggers (Gesine) and his mother, Inga Jablonsky (Bill). 

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that you remember Heiko by donating to a foundation in Heiko's name at Wake Forest University German and Russian Department, or offering gifts to the Derrick L. Davis Cancer Center, or to any favorite charity working to make this world a little bit better.  A celebration of his life will be held at a later date.