Rick Pigg learned early not to sweat the small stuff.
“His big saying, if something didn’t come out the way he planned it, was ‘It ain’t nothin’ but a thang,’” said his wife of 41 years, Cynthia “Cindy” Pigg, 60. “He was just so mellow, so laid back.”
Mr. Pigg died March 15 at age 63, following a seven-year battle with multiple myeloma.
He grew up off Victoria Road south of Festus in a little house crowded with his parents, seven siblings and his aunt, Phyllis.
“It was a happy life,” Cindy said. “Although he did overcome a lot.”
One of those things was a school bus crash in 1970 when he was a sophomore at St. Pius X High School in Crystal City.
“The bus hit a patch of ice and overturned,” Cindy said. “He flew out of his seat and hit one of the lights in the ceiling and it crushed his skull.”
Luck was with him, though, even as he lay unconscious and bleeding from a punctured jugular vein.
“A doctor happened to stop right after the wreck,” Cindy said. “If he hadn’t happened along, Rick never would have survived.”
He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors gave him a 15 percent chance of survival, and underwent surgery to repair his fractured skull with a metal plate.
“He was in the hospital a long time,” his wife said. “His mom and dad took turns staying there with him. His dad would take off his jacket and leave it in the chair so that if Richard woke up, he would know he’d been there.”
The teenager spent long months in recovery. He went bowling to help with strength and coordination, and his mother took him to bingo to help him relearn numbers.
“When he went back to school, he had his head shaved, and he had to wear a protective helmet,” Cindy said. “Two of his best buddies, Mark Smith and John Haefner, shaved theirs also so he wouldn’t have to feel so bad.”
Determination won out, and he made a full recovery.
“I never had an inkling about his accident until he told me about it later,” Cindy said.
The two met in a bar in Belleville, Ill., and “didn’t really click” at first, Cindy said.
“We liked each other, but it was more on a friendship level,” she said. “A few years later, I called to see what he was up to. He was living in Hillsboro, working for the county highway department, and I was in Illinois.”
Their romance heated up the second time around.
“When he wasn’t on the road to visit me, he was on the phone,” Cindy said with a laugh. “One day he said, ‘It’s getting too expensive, so we’re just going to have to get married.’
That summer he proposed to me on a sunset dinner cruise on the Larry Don excursion boat on Lake of the Ozarks.”
They were married in 1976 and had two daughters.
Mr. Pigg went to work for the Missouri Department of Transportation in 1993.
“He loved being outdoors,” his wife said. “He liked working with the graders and snowplows and heavy equipment. He also loved cutting wood and going fishing.”
Mr. Pigg was active with Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Hillsboro.
“He enjoyed helping decorate the church for Christmas, setting up the tents for the parish picnic,” Cindy said. “At Christmas, he always had to get a name off the giving tree.
“Father Chris would say, ‘You don’t have to get everything on the list!’ but he would do it anyway. Rick was very generous; if he could help you out, he would.”
Mr. Pigg also enjoyed flying and obtained his private pilot’s license in 2000.
“He was afraid to take me up (in a plane),” Cindy said with a laugh. “But I don’t think he really needed to have that fear; he was an excellent pilot. He did take our daughters, his brother and his nephew, Eddie.”
Mr. Pigg also enjoyed spending time with his grandsons, aged 18, 14 and 10.
“He took them on camping and fishing trips. We took them to the zoo, the Science Center, the Museum of Transportation,” Cindy said. “He just liked showing and teaching them things.”
In 2010, Mr. Pigg retired from MoDOT after he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.
“He had a stem cell transplant using his own cells, and it put him in remission,” his wife said.
Mr. Pigg lost his father in early 2017 and his sister, Jane, last fall. In the midst of their illnesses, he learned his cancer had returned.
“He waited until Jane passed to let everyone know what his real situation was,” Cindy said. “That was the kind of guy he was.”
The situation was grave.
“His oncologist told us it was like a runaway train, and they just couldn’t stop it,” Cindy said. “In February, they told him there basically wasn’t anything more they could do for him. He just wanted to come home.”
Cindy said her husband will be remembered for his generosity of spirit.
“If you asked him for anything, he would do it, even when he wasn’t supposed to,” she said. “I never heard him raise his voice or talk in an angry tone. He was just a generous, unselfish, devoted, loving man.
“I miss him terribly, but he’s in no more pain and I know he’s in a better place.”
“Life Story,” posted each Saturday on Leader Publications’ website, focuses on one individual’s impact on his or her community.