50171
By Keith Brake
Hazel Sig was a self-professed tomboy as a girl, infused with a spirit of adventure that has lasted a lifetime.
She has been an avid motorcyclist, a daring aerobatics pilot, a bold company co-founder and entrepreneur, and a proud and benevolent community icon.
Hazel has packed plenty into her first 100 years on this planet.
Rather than try to capture it all (I’d need volumes), I asked Hazel to react to several key words or situations I mentioned to her. That way, I thought, I can share how vivid her memories remain, how sharp her word pictures are. Still.
Let’s dive in:
Corvettes: “I always wanted one,” Hazel said.
She wound up owning 17 of them.
“Poncho and I (first husband Glen Sigafoose) drooled over them.”
By and by she had the means. “My first Corvette was yellow,” she said. She wanted a silver one. She got it.
“When the new models came out, I’d trade in the old one for it,” she said.
She was friends with Bob Brownell, founder of Brownells, Inc. “Bob would go out on rides with me,” Hazel said.
After Bob passed, his son, Frank, went on those rides, “and he started buying them,” Hazel said.
Motorcycles – Hazel learned ‘cycle riding from Poncho, just like she learned how to run a linotype machine at the old Montezuma Republican: By watching Poncho.
“I had a problem getting away from stop signs,” Hazel said. “I would kill the engine. Poncho and I rode out north of town. We’d be switching seats while going 60 or 70 miles as hour,” she said.
“I learned to handle the machine but I still killed the engine,” she said. “But, I finally did learn how to get away from a stop sign.”
Learning to Fly – Hazel and Poncho rode motorcycles to Ottumwa to watch airplanes and take flying lessons. “I never did make a poor landing,” Hazel said. “But I struggled with takeoffs. My coach was afraid to let me solo.”
She earned her pilot’s license, which for her came before she earned a drivers license.
Hazel became an aerobatics pilot. Which is another way, I guess, to say a stunt flyer, the kind that performed in barnstorming shows.
Hazel was planning to teach flying. “I thought, ‘if I’m going to teach, I better to know how to get out of situations.”
She mentioned she never made a bad landing. But she also said she made seven emergency landings.
She recalled one of them, in detail.
She took off from the Oskaloosa airport. “I taxied out, took off, got up to 600 feet, and the prop wasn’t turning!” she said.
“I got the nose down and rolled right, but there was no runway left. To the left there were hangars and a wide taxiway. Forward of me, there was a rough field and fences.”
“I did an ‘S’ turn and put the nose down – that speeds you up.”
She landed with no problem.
Hazel flew in the same air shows with the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds. She didn’t fly with them – just in the same show.
She and Glen purchased a Piper Cub with instructions on how to turn it into an aerobatics plane. That included sawing off portions of the wings. Yes, themselves.
The same principles apply to real planes as to models, and they sure had experience with model airplanes.
Second husband Maxey Hester helped Hazel build her open cockpit Spacewalker plane, then they built a second one. A lot of Montezuma residents remember her flying over in those craft.
Glen Sigafoose died in 1980 while performing in an air show above Centerville. Hazel vividly recalled details from that day.
She still flew after that, but not in shows. “I didn’t want to do aerobatics any more,” she said.
Powder Puff Derby – We’re skipping around a bit here. Hazel flew in this Seattle, Wa., to Ft. Myers, Fl. Event in 1966. That was in her Spacewalker, which only did about 100 miles an hour.
“We were in the slow category, and got the trophy for being the slowest plane in the race,” she said.
Hazel stopped flying after Maxey passed away. “I couldn’t get into the Spacewalker any more,” she said. “I had a Cessna, and I used a step stool to get in. One time, I forgot to pull it back into the plane, and I dragged it.”
The Monuments – Gifts to the community were the Ten Commandments monument outside First Presbyterian Evangelical Church, and the Bill of Rights monument in front of the Poweshiek County Courthouse.
The Bill of Rights monument was a first-in-the-nation structure and Hazel is proud of that.
She has a duplicate Ten Commandments monument on her property.
Hazel praised the work ethic of the family of Sig Manufacturing employees during her time of ownership. “We had more than 100 of them,” she said. “Everyone knew their job.”
Hazel also was proud that a debt the firm was carrying was cleared within two years of her ownership. “Some people thought I’d go out of business,” she said. “If you don’t grow, you die.”
Cats – Hazel loved them. “I had nine of them at one time, but you’d never see them all in the same place,” she said.
“They all lived to be between 17 and 20 years old.”
But they’re gone now, “and I’m lonesome without one,” Hazel said.
Charles Lindbergh – She flew in a plane piloted by the famed aviator when she was just 3 years old. Lindbergh was doing an air show in Grinnell. “After that, I’d see a plane overhead, and I’d say, ‘I know it’s Lindy!’”
That was a plane ride she can’t remember, but can’t forget, either, because family members reconstructed it for her for years.
Hazel’s dad, Jim Hicks, was said to be a daring race car driver. “My dad would have loved my life,” Hazel said. “It has been a good life.”
And now that good life starts into its second 100 years!