Clifford William Allen Diggins

Clifford William Allen “Bill” Diggins, electronic engineer and trumpet player of West Union, Ohio died late Friday night/Saturday morning, June 26, 2021 after suffering from vascular dementia following a series of strokes and aneurisms. He was 72 years of age. His death was preceded by that of his beloved wife, Elizabeth Jane Stein, who died in early 2002 after a long battle with breast cancer. Diggins was born in Cincinnati, Ohio to Clifford Diggins, Sr. (himself born to Irish and Jewish parents in Seattle, Washington) and Clara Lewandowski (herself born to Polish immigrants in Detroit, Michigan). Originally growing up and attending school in the Reading area of Cincinnati and later attending grammar and high school in Mason, OH, his interest in electronics began when, as a kid, a kite of his flew into the nearby property of the Voice of America’s Mason Station, something which could have caused him trouble and embarrassment, but instead put him in contact with and under the mentorship of Jack Gray and several other engineers who would later be his bosses and coworkers when he himself would work for Voice of America’s (originally the Crosley Broadcasting Corporation’s) Bethany Relay Station several decades later. He eventually went on to earn a degree in electronic engineering from the University of Louisville and helped finance it from working in television repair shops in Cincinnati and Louisville during his late teens and early twenties. After receiving his degree, Clifford Diggins moved to Chicago and worked as an electronic engineer for Zenith (“the quality goes in before the name goes on”). His interest in music also began when he was very young, first becoming inspired to play the trumpet as a kid, hearing Maynard Ferguson on his father’s Stan Kenton records. At the same time he worked for Zenith in Chicago, he engaged in a parallel career at night playing trumpet in Blues clubs on the South and West side of the city, frequently playing with Otis Spann before his untimely death in 1970 and sometimes setting in with Blues paragons like Muddy Waters and James Cotton. He later was drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps. towards the end of the Vietnam War, being one of the last conscripted during the conflict. In an illustration of serendipity (at least for him), due to his trumpet playing ability, he was called to play in the U.S. Marine Band; he would later say that playing the trumpet saved his life as most of the other members of his platoon became casualties of the war. When he returned to Cincinnati after being discharged, he continued his studies in music, studying at University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) and eventually studying under Frank Brown who founded the school’s jazz program. He continued to play at clubs around the city of Cincinnati in various jazz, rock, R&B, and even country (he worked regularly as a trumpet player for both Bobby Womack and Tom T. Hall) bands playing at Cincinnati and Dayton area venues, many of which no longer exist such as The Viking Lounge, Ed Moss’s Emanon, Gilly’s, the Flamingo Club, and the Blue Wisp, a few times getting a chance to play with greats like Sonny Stitt, Clark Terry, Houston Person, and Jack Sheldon who happened to drop into the venues and set in with the bands and musicians he was playing with. He also worked as an engineer at various radio stations around Cincinnati during this time including WCLU, where he met his future wife Elizabeth Jane Stein. He continued to work during the 1980s and 1990s as an electronic engineer at Sylvania Electronics in Dayton, at the Voice of America’s Bethany Relay Station, as aforementioned, where he designed several important and innovative electronic circuits and did special work on an independent sideband demodulator which worked more efficiently and used about 1/40th of the wattage of the previous setup (when he and his friends looked to getting him a patent for it, they found out that it had been already developed independently by Leonard Kahn), at Northfolk Southern, and at General Electric Corporation, designing other innovative electronic circuitry and working on their microwave communications systems (this is evidenced in GE’s “talking train” commercials from years ago, displaying the manifestation of some of Diggins’s and his co-workers’ output). He eventually all but retired from his work in electronics in the early 2000s to support his wife, Jane, when she was battling cancer and then take care of their son, Samuel, after her untimely death. Clifford Diggins did other chores and had several other hobbies related to his work and knowledge including ham radio, powering his home from wind turbines that he maintained, and repairing cars, televisions, small engines, computers, antique radios, his Ku-band and C-band television dishes and receivers, and almost any other appliances that needed to be fixed around the house or that a friend of his had. With his ham radio call sign, WA8LXJ, he also broke records and won contests when he was a perfervid operator, which can be seen in his winning of the WPX SSB contest for several consecutive years during the mid-1970s to early 1980s, and in his many milestones that he set especially in the realm of QRP (picking up low or reduced power signals from great distances), where he set a record in 1989 (131,250 mi per watt on 20 meters) and later in 2003 (around 82,000,000 mi per watt on 40 meters). Clifford Diggins, simpatico friend to those who knew him well, caring husband to his late wife, Jane, encouraging, sagacious, and solicitous father to his son, Samuel, and dedicated owner to their various cats and dogs over the years is survived by his son, Samuel, and his sisters Patty, Carol, and Dolores as well as the children of those sisters. He and his individual personality, intellect, wisdom, and humor will be greatly missed.