Jean Kathryn Wrenn Higgins of Siler City, North Carolina, graduated from Siler City High School in 1936, and then attended Woman's College of the University of North Carolina (now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro). Following graduation in 1940, she taught history and English in Chatham County, North Carolina.
Higgins joined the WAVES in 1943. She was sworn in in Raleigh and then sent to Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts in September 1943. Higgins’s first assignment was at a naval air station in Weeksville, North Carolina, where she briefly supervised enlisted WAVES before being transferred to Glynco, Georgia. There, she did more personnel work and also served as an aide to the commanding officer until 1945, when she married and was discharged.
After World War II, Higgins and her husband, Victor, moved to Washington, D.C., to await her husband’s discharge from Bethesda Naval Hospital. After the birth of her four children and the death of her husband, Higgins returned to teaching. She taught at a school in Georgia before returning to live in Siler City. In 1987 she moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Higgins died 21 October, 2012.
