A Valpo Life in the Spotlight: Biggs family history

Jim Biggs has been working in government and public service roles practically his entire adult life. Now, after 20 years as a Porter County commissioner, he’s retiring. This does not mean he won’t be serving his community anymore, though.

For Biggs, being of service to his fellow residents is in his blood. The Biggs family traces their Northwest Indiana roots back to 1835, two years before Porter County was officially established.

From the very beginning, members of the family have been leaders and public servants, and very few over these almost 200 years have even moved outside of the area.

“I’m the only one involved in politics,” Biggs said. “Actually, I got into politics by accident. I had been a Medicaid fraud investigator for the Indiana Attorney General’s office back in the ’80s and early ’90s, and I was investigating a complaint in Valparaiso. Then I met Karen and Chuck Conover, who were very involved with the Porter County Republican Party. Chuck was Center Township trustee at the time, and they’re the ones that convinced me to run for county commissioner.”

Prior to his role in government, Biggs had served as a police officer, graduating from the University of Houston’s Law Enforcement Academy in Texas, where he had briefly moved to pursue a career in law enforcement.

“I was a police officer down there for about two and a half years,” Biggs said. “Just long enough to know that I wasn’t going to do that for the rest of my life.”

The Biggs family has several family members who have formerly or are currently serving in law enforcement, most in or immediately around Porter County. Nine members of the family have graduated from the police academy in Indiana.

“I moved back home after being offered a job here with the Attorney General’s office,” Biggs said. “That was my introduction into elected office, working alongside people there.”

The Biggs family history dates back to the Zane Settlement, The Zane Settlement was the first pioneer community established in Liberty Township, Porter County, Indiana founded near the center of the township in early 1835 by Asa Zane and Ira Biggs, Jim Biggs’ great, great grandfather. It served as an early local hub and housed the township’s very first subscription school. “My great grandfather was elected township trustee in 1904, in Liberty Township. I was elected to the Porter County Board of Commissioners in 1991.”

Biggs himself has seven brothers and one sister, and though he’s the only one in politics, most of the others have still entered roles of public service. Most of his family members – aunts, uncles, cousins – have also had many children, and Biggs sometimes finds it hard to keep track of everyone and all the ways they’re serving the public.

“If you’ve ever heard of ‘Six degrees of Kevin Bacon,’ that’s kind of what we have going on in Porter County. Everyone is six degrees from a member of the Biggs family,” Biggs said. “When a family is as large as mine is, and has been living in the same county for 191 years, it’s easy to understand why.”

Biggs has sadly gone through the loss of three of his siblings, including a sister and two brothers who were both police officers. Another of his siblings recently retired from a lifetime of serving with Indiana’s toll road. Biggs’s brothers’ police work ranged through multiple towns and counties, including his brother, Gary, who retired from the La Porte County sheriff’s department only to now serve as a school resource officer for South Central schools. His brother Billy retired as a police officer from the Northern Indiana Commutor Transportation District, his brother Tim served as a sergeant on the town of Porter police department for 20 years, and his brother Larry retired from the Laporte County Sheriff’s. He also has nephews that retired from the Porter County Sheriffs department, and South Bend Police Department. And if that weren’t enough, he has three nephews who are currently employed as police officers in the cities of Valparaiso and Portage.

“It’s interesting,” Biggs said. “When you get to be my age and you’re born and raised in one area, being in public service, you see a lot of change. It’s a natural progression in any place over time, and I’ve seen so much change in Porter County in 60 or so years. Some of it is good, some of it not so good – but it’s changing. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. If someone offered me a free house in Hawaii or Florida or someplace like that, I wouldn’t take it. That’s not where my family is.

During his time in government, Biggs has learned a lot about how processes work, and it has taught him to know how to communicate with people in the area who come to his office with questions or concerns. He doesn’t want to be yet another politician pushing people off onto someone else when they have something to talk about. He listens, offers solutions when he can, and guides them to the right resources when he can’t.

“It isn’t always easy, and it especially wasn’t easy at the beginning,” Biggs said. “Over the years, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve grown an appreciation for ethics and integrity, and I know that at the end of the day, that’s what anyone wants out of their leaders. Small government isn’t about ignoring people and getting together in a room with other politicians to do whatever we want. It’s about meeting the needs of the people in the community and it’s residents.

It’s important to Biggs to be the kind of leader who earns the trust of those who rely on him, whether it’s the residents in the county or the people working in the commissioner’s office with him. He knows the importance of establishing relationships and being easy to reach, and he hopes that as he leaves public office, this is the legacy that remains in his place.

“This is a community largely comprised of blue collar workers and farmers, people who work with their hands,” Biggs said. “They don’t want someone lording over them from an office they can’t even get a hold of. They want to trust us and know that their needs are being heard. They deserve to know that we are a county of officials who care. We want to help them because we are right here with them as their neighbors.”

The Biggs family, regardless of their specific role in public service, has always lived as a family that helps where they see a need. Whether serving in public office, protecting the streets, or any other position, they continue to have a strong presence in the community that stands for the values of hard work, reliability, and building connections.