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LO U I S W. RIGG S
1922–2002
Elected in 1987
“For innovative leadership and design of bridges and
rapid transit structures in the United States and foreign countries.”
BY JAMES LAMMIE
L ouis W. Riggs, retired chairman of Tudor Engineering
Company, died on June 12, 2002, in Lafayette, California. With
his passing, the engineering and construction industry lost a
leader, a manager, a teacher, and a real gentleman.
Louis was born in Pearsall, Texas, on June 29, 1922. He was
raised in Riverside, California. He joined the U.S. Air Force
in World War II and was assigned to the 494th Squadron as a
navigator, a position in which he used his early engineering
and mathematics training. While on a bombing mission
over Bulgaria, his plane was shot down and he was held in
a prisoner of war camp there. He did not speak highly of his
captors. After the USSR entered the war, Louis was released.
He was decorated, returned to the United States, and assigned
to March Field in Riverside where he met his future wife,
Patricia. After marriage, they moved to San Francisco where
he started his professional life.
Louis attended the University of California, Berkeley,
graduating with a B.S. in civil engineering in 1948. He was a
member of Tau Beta Pi and was elected to the civil engineering
society, Chi Epsilon. He served the university in many
capacities. He received the Trustee Citation Award from the
university’s Berkeley Foundation in 1981 and the Distinguished
Engineering Alumni Award from the university’s Engineering
257
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258 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Alumni Society in 1984 (now called the Berkeley Engineering
Innovation Award). He was a frequent speaker in civil
engineering courses and a loyal “Bears Backer” for many
seasons.
After graduation, Louis went to work as a junior engineer
for the state of California with the Division of San Francisco
Bay Toll Crossings, further stimulating his interest in bridges.
Then in 1951 he joined Tudor Engineering Company, at that
time a small firm with an excellent reputation in structural
design, particularly of bridges. Within 10 years he became
a vice president and a member of the Board of Directors. In
1963 and for the next 20 years he served as president and chief
executive officer of Tudor. He became chairman in 1983 and
served in that position until his retirement in 1986.
During his career Louis managed many challenging projects.
One of his favorites was the Tagus River Bridge piers in Lisbon,
the deepest in the world at that time and made more difficult
by the steeply sloping rock foundation. Louis was also one of
a select group of visionary leaders who foresaw the need for
a regional rapid transit system in the San Francisco area. This
led to his proudest accomplishment, the BART System—the
San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit System—America’s first
modern transit system. In this joint venture—PBTB (Parsons
Brinckerhoff-Tudor-Bechtel)—Louis was on the Joint Venture
Board of Control, with overall design and construction
responsibilities. Tudor had direct responsibility for the design
of the entire system, aerial structure, with its difficult soil and
foundation conditions and strong seismic design requirements.
That aerial structure has since survived two major earthquakes
in San Francisco. The PBTB Joint Venture moved on to guide
the design of the Caracas Metro, with heavy emphasis on
technology transfer to the local Venezuelan staff.
The final PBTB joint venture project was MARTA—the
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority—for which
planning began in 1967 and, after many political and
environmental issues, moved into construction in 1975. Louis
was again on the joint venture board, with overall design and
construction responsibilities, until 1976. At that time, new
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LO U I S W. RIGG S 259
contract terms dictated that Bechtel withdraw from the project
and the joint venture was reconfigured as PB/T (Parsons
Brinckerhoff/Tudor). Louis played a key role in all projects,
particularly structural engineering, until his retirement. Along
the way he continued to grow Tudor and moved the company
into hydropower, building designs, such as the Oakland bulk
mail facility for the U.S. Postal Service, and many bridges, such
as the Dry Creek/Warm Springs Bridge in California. These
projects do not represent all of Louis Riggs’s contributions to
the design industry but do serve to illustrate the scope and
scale of his many accomplishments.
Louis also contributed to the engineering industry and his
profession through lectures, with his many papers that featured
innovations and improved practices, on his current projects
and through his active participation in many professional
societies and organizations. He was a long-term member of the
American Public Transit Association and the American Public
Works Association. He was elected a fellow of the American
Consulting Engineers Council and served as vice president
from 1979 to 1981. For the Consulting Engineers Association
of California, he was director from 1964 to 1974 and served
as president in 1973. He was also a fellow of the American
Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). He was very active in the
Society of American Military Engineers as a director and vice
president of the San Francisco post and was elected president
of the national society in 1981. Finally, he was a member of the
Building Research Advisory Board of the National Research
Council from 1975 to 1981 and then chairman and director of
the follow-on Buildings Future Council.
Louis was also recognized for his accomplishments with
the Greensfelder Construction Prize in 1967 by the ASCE
for his paper on the Tagus River Bridge and with an Honor
Award from the Building Industry Conference Board in 1974.
He received the Golden Beaver Award for Engineering in
1979. (The Beavers are the organization of the western U.S.
heavy construction contractors.) The recognition that Louis
was proudest of was his election to the National Academy of
Engineering in 1987.
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260 MEMORIAL TRIBUTES
Louis is survived by his loving wife of over 55 years, Patricia;
his daughter, Katherine Stimson, and her husband, John;
and his son, James Riggs. He is also survived by his brother
Leroy Riggs and wife Marilyn. In addition to his legacy as an
outstanding and innovative structural engineer, Louis was
known as a kind, loving, intelligent human being who never
stopped teaching others and supporting his family.
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