By Keith Brake
Montezuma Magazine Editor
Here’s a challenge: Boil down the first 100 years of Hazel Sig’s life into one phrase.
Well, you don’t have to and neither do I. Someone has already done it for us.
“A Century of Adventure” is the phrase.
It appears on the place mats that will be used at her 100th birthday party on Sunday, March 6, in the Presbyterian Family Center in Montezuma. (1 to 4 p.m. and yes, go).
I have spent time reading articles about her and talking with her on the phone.
That phrase is great. But it would take a book – maybe more than one – to capture her very full life.
The start came in Grinnell. On the third day of of the third month of 1922, in the third town that her parents had lived in, on Third Street, and she was the third child of her parents, Jim and Ceatta (Huff) Hicks.
Hazel’s family moved to Montezuma when she was six years old.
Her dad was a daring race car driver. He died after a crash when she was just 17, but much of Hazel’s daring spirit may have come from him.
When she was three, she had her first airplane ride – piloted by no less than famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, who was in Grinnell for an air show.
She doesn’t remember much about it, of course. But, with all the coaching she got in subsequent years from her family, it was a flight she won’t forget.
Hazel’s adventures as a kid included climbing trees, shooting air rifles and loving motorcycles and model airplanes.
When she got older, she learned how to ride motorcycles and fly airplanes. She became an aerobatics pilot and taught that art form.
Hazel was working as a dental assistant when she saw Glen Sigafoose ride into town on a motorcycle. He wound up taking a job as a linotype operator at The Montezuma Republican, which was across the street.
Hazel watched Glen operate the linotype, and learned how to do it just by watching him. She became faster than him, but he didn’t feel threatened by a female, and encouraged her.
They were married in 1943.
In 1951, she and Glen, or “Poncho” as she called him, co-founded Sig Manufacturing Co., Inc., of Montezuma.
Glen died in 1980 while performing in a air show over Centerville. She became sole owner of the company by purchasing his half of the firm.
The firm had debt issues, which were cleared up within two years under her full management. She was proud of that, because she had been told she couldn’t do it.
After a few years, she married Maxey Hester, who had been a family friend and shared some of her hobbies.
Fast forward to the modern era, beyond when Hazel sold her interests in the company.
She saw a magazine ad and wound up erecting the first memorial to the Bill of Rights in the country. It stands today in front of the Poweshiek County Courthouse.
She also had a The Ten Commandments monument put up outside First Presbyterian Evangelical Church, and another one outside her home.
Sig had more than 100 employees when Hazel owned it and she considered them family.
She has spent countless hours visiting with her extended family and countless others in the Montezuma community.