Maddigan was remembered by longtime adversary and eventually friend "German John" Wittenberg as an occasionally cantankerous but mostly caring businessman who did things his way and was able to match business wits with the late financier Harry Weinberg.

Maddigan's wife, Shelly, said he came to Lahaina around 1964, working with Waikiki businessman Donn Beach to reopen the Pioneer Inn.

On Oahu, he'd been working for Castle & Cooke after moving to Hawaii with his first wife, Shelly Maddigan told The Maui News. She left him, but he saw no reason to leave the islands. He began working as a comptroller, but at heart he was an entrepreneur who preferred to be on his own.

"Even now, when he retired from the Marketplace, he started an enormous project in Washington, D.C. On this one, he was a counselor, adviser and visionary," Shelly Maddigan said.

Wittenberg, who arrived in Lahaina about the time that Maddigan landed at the historic port town, said Maddigan "always came across as a sort of guy with a little bit of bluster."

"He had a good heart," Wittenberg continued. "He was a private person, and it took a while to get to know him. Sometimes, he would tell people what they didn't want to hear, and they would get tracked out of shape. But he helped a lot of people, and a lot of people don't know that."

Maddigan completed the Lahaina Marketplace in 1969, at that time an innovative retail complex centered on a bar built into a banyan tree that featured small souvenir shops and restaurants, slowly growing with Lahaina into a cluster of art shops.

Wittenberg said the development of the Marketplace was a source of conflict between him and Maddigan. When he asked Maddigan for some of the old firebricks that Maddigan was using to line the ground, Maddigan refused, saying he needed them.

"So I went to where the two hippies were tearing down the old Pioneer Mill oven, got them three cases of beer, and they filled the back of my truck with the firebricks.

"I don't think he ever knew about that."

Maddigan was born in Buffalo, N.Y., in October 1932. Shelly Maddigan said his father died when he was 12, and he was sent off to a boarding school before he moved to Colorado to join a sister and eventually go to college. He was skiing and working on the ski patrol in Aspen when "at one point, when he was 19, he said he realized he could live his life being on the ski patrol and when he was middle aged, he would have nothing.

"So he continued in school. By the time he got out, he had the equivalent of about six degrees," she said.

He was active in a number of community organizations, including the Rotary, and was a founder of the Haleakala Waldorf School, for which a Higgins Maddigan Memorial Fund has been set up. Donations in his memory may be made to the school at 4160 Lower Kula Road in Waiakoa, or by calling 878-2511.

A celebration of life will be held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at the Waxman Amphitheater at the school in Kula. Borthwick Norman's Mortuary is assisting with the arrangements. An obituary on Maddigan was published on Page A4 on Sunday.

Shelley Maddigan said he had directed there should not be any memorial service.

"The reason was he was afraid nobody would show up. There are so many things he contributed to that nobody knows about. It's because he believed you do things because you want to do them, not for the acknowledgments."