Dorothy Katz Wiggins (

née The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Palmer; formerly Gittinger; born August 14, 1925) is an American

social media Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the Content creation, creation, information exchange, sharing and news aggregator, aggregation of Content (media), content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongs ...

influencer, socialite and former stylist. She is noted for her presence as a nonagenarian on both

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

and

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

Early life and education

Wiggins was born Dorothy Katz Palmer on August 14, 1925, at

New York Hospital Weill Cornell Medical Center (; previously known as New York Hospital, Old New York Hospital, and City Hospital) is a research hospital in New York City. It is the teaching hospital for Cornell University's medical school and is part of NewYork-P ...

, the only child, to Ferdinand Palmer (

né The birth name is the name of the person given upon their birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name or to the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a births registe ...

Katz; 1894–1952) and Linda Graves Palmer (née Gross; 1899–1956). Her parents both were

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

and had changed their last names at the time Wiggins was born. She was primarily raised in

Forest Hills, Queens Forest Hills is a neighborhood in the central portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is adjacent to Corona to the north, Rego Park and Glendale to the west, Forest Park to the south, Kew Gardens to the southeast and Flushing ...

and

Lyme, Connecticut Lyme is a New England town, town in New London County, Connecticut, New London County, Connecticut, United States, situated on the eastern side of the Connecticut River. The town is part of the Lower Connecticut River Valley Planning Region, Conn ...

, where her parents owned a home on Beckett Hill. There her parents became acquainted with Guy C. Wiggins through his art. Wiggins graduated from Hempstead High School in

Hempstead, New York The Town of Hempstead is the largest of the three towns in Nassau County (alongside North Hempstead and Oyster Bay) on Long Island, in New York, United States. The town's combined population was 793,409 at the 2020 census. It occupies the s ...

and subsequently attended

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the New York City borough of Queens. Part of the City University of New York system, Queens College occupies an campus primarily located in Flushing. Queens College was established in 1937 and offe ...

Personal life

In 1946, she firstly married Dr. William Carl Gittinger, a son of William M. Gittinger and Caroline Gittinger (

Raab), of

Ozone Park, Queens Ozone Park is a neighborhood in the southwestern section of the New York City boroughs of New York City, borough of Queens, New York (state), New York, United States. It is next to the Aqueduct Racetrack in South Ozone Park, Queens, South Ozone ...

. He died in the crash of

Capital Airlines Flight 75 Capital Airlines Flight 75 was a domestic scheduled Capital Airlines passenger flight between LaGuardia Airport and Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. A Vickers Viscount flying the route crashed near Chase ...

on May 12, 1959, near

Chase, Maryland Chase is an unincorporated community in eastern Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. Geography Chase is located at (39.3634413, -76.3710704). Chase is located on the waterfront of the Gunpowder River, Middle River, Dundee Creek, Saltp ...

, aged 32. They had a son: * Grant P. Wiggins (

Gittinger; 1950–2015), a noted educator and author, married Denise Wilbur, had four children. He would later be adopted by Wiggins' second husband and take his family name. On September 26, 1959, she married, secondly, to Guy Arthur Wiggins (1920–2020), a son of Guy C. Wiggins and Dolores Wiggins (

Gaxton). He was also a grandson of

Carleton Wiggins Carleton Wiggins NA (1848–1932) was an American landscape and cattle painter. He was born in Turner, Orange County, New York,

, a noted

Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. Early on, the paintings typically depicted the Hudson River Valley and the sur ...

painter. They were introduced since Dorothy's parents collected the paintings of his father and were acquaintances while living in

. They had two sons; * Guy Stuart Wiggins (born 1962), a lawyer and businessman, firstly married to Rose Alexandra Kernochan, divorced. * Noel Carleton Wiggins (born 1964), an artist, creative director and founder of ''Areaware'', a furniture, decor and design company, based in New York City. As of April 2025, aged 99, Wiggins independently resides in a

brownstone Brownstone is a brown Triassic–Jurassic sandstone that was historically a popular building material. The term is also used in the United States and Canada to refer to a townhouse clad in this or any other aesthetically similar material. Ty ...

in the

West Village The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The West Village is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and 14th Street (Manhattan), 14th Street to ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiggins, Dorothy Living people American social media influencers 1925 births Mass media people from New York City Mass media people from Manhattan American socialites American Internet celebrities American TikTokers