The Rev. Dr. Robert A. Diggs Sr., Mathews County native and pastor of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Petersburg, has received the 2025 President’s Lifetime Achievement Award signed by President Joe Biden.
Diggs attended public schools in Mathews County and was baptized in Zion Baptist Church at Cardinal by the Rev. Dr. W.R. Henderson. Following graduation from Norfolk State University, he was commissioned in the U.S. Army as an infantry officer. During that career, which included receiving a master’s degree from the University of Iowa, he was posted to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
Diggs was called into the ministry while serving in the Army, and received two master’s degrees and doctorate in ministry from Howard University.
He became pastor at Tabernacle in 1996 and retired from active Army service in 1998 as a lieutenant colonel.
In Petersburg, he led Tabernacle in a $3.4 million building project of a Community Life Center and in 1999 founded the Restoration of Petersburg Co...