Sun Shines, And So Does Mrs. Siegel

[Editor’s Note: In the wake of the death of Adele Siegel, here is a two-part series, that ran Sept. 25 and Sept. 27, 2006, on the lives and activities of Mrs. Siegel and her husband Henry shortly after his death.]

The Culver City sun shone brilliantly along Braddock Drive this afternoon, and also in the smiling face of the newly widowed Adele Siegel. Halfway to her 91st birthday, Mrs. Siegel was upbeat and dashing in her vivid pink skirt and white, fluffy-sleeved sweater. Strong and resolute in her well-known liberal political beliefs, she is fulfilling the same muscular role in her newly narrowed private life. Alone for the first time since girlhood, she looked plenty sturdy enough to confront and conquer her new responsibilities. One week ago tonight, barely a month after their 69th wedding anniversary, on Aug. 27, Mr. Siegel died from complications at Anaheim Kaiser Hospital, nine days after becoming a patient. He was 93 years old. With Mr. Siegel in and out of the hospital numerous times, for differing causes, in the three months since late June, it was an inordinately stressful summer for both partners of Culver City’s First Couple of social justice and political activism. They were everywhere together, but they were as different as they were in love with each other for almost three-quarters of a century.

Before delineating what separately identified each of them and how they complemented each other, Mrs. Siegel, with the aid of her walker, crossed into the living room while reciting a child’s fairy tale. “Jack Sprat could eat no fat. His wife could eat no lean. Between them both, they licked the platter clean.” At 5-foot-8, Mr. Siegel, from the time he began courting his wife in July, 1936, was sparely built. Still, he ate mountains of food, Mrs. Siegel said. But, unaccountably, he never gained an ounce. Friends marveled at his quantitative eating habits. Over the last 60 years, seldom did Culver City’s politically radioactive residents see one Siegel without the other. But they were distinguishable. She was out front, the talker, the face of the aggressively campaigning couple. He was the stoic one, comfortable when he was in the background. “Henry just was not very social,” Mrs. Siegel said. “He was friendly. But he didn’t really make friends. If we went anyplace, it was I who made the arrangements. I was the talker.” When it came to political philosophy, the Siegels were a matched set, liberal Democrats, equally fervent. “I was not political when we married in 1937,” she said. “I don’t know what Henry was. For 7 years, I didn’t belong to anything. I just took care of my children. All of a sudden, I felt a need to be with people. I joined a group. Henry joined also. I became very active. Henry was just part of the group. He was very intelligent, the best speller in the world. He could tell you the correct definition for any word you would ask him. He was a dictionary.” Mrs. Siegel has hosted hundreds of political meetings in her mid-town home over the years. Once she entertained several allies at a home meeting called to seek the ouster of Police Chief Ted Cooke. “The meeting began,” Mrs. Siegel said, “but Henry would not come into the room.” Why not? She threw back a small smile. “It was just his personality, which I could never understand,” she said. “However, he did something I didn’t do. He was instrumental in organizing a chapter of the American Friends Service Committee in Culver City. Later, I came across a newspaper article giving him credit and calling him a leader. This was probably the only time he ever threw himself out there and became a leader — without me.”

Mrs. Siegel addressed the question of why they worked effectively together as a political couple. “When I was almost ready to retire as a teacher, Henry still was working. Soon he retired from his 40th job. People would say to me, ‘If your husband is retired, why don’t you retire and have a free life?’ I said I never could do that. I couldn’t live with him, the two of us being in the same house, day in, day out. Couldn’t do it. So I didn’t, for a few more years, until I was 70 years old.”

In the brightly illumined home on Braddock Drive where the Siegels lived for more than 61 years and raised all four of their children, two markings are familiar to every guest. On the dining room table, under glass, are at least 200 snapshots, artfully arranged, across the table’s surface, black-and-white and technicolor signposts of their seven decades together. Early in the afternoon, one sunray from a northerly window and one sunray from an easterly window called out, “Notice me.” Out the northerly window was a favorite scene from the Siegels’ long marriage “Henry’s Magic Garage,” as nearly everyone called it. Mr. Siegel was utterly fulfilled in life as a loner, in contrast to his gregarious bride. Mrs. Siegel recalled that her husband spent long, long, long hours in the four-square silence of his beloved garage, creating and inventing. “If we didn’t have something and I needed it,” Mrs. Siegel said, “Henry would make it.” He designed toys for their children and for their grandchildren. He puttered, too. Loved being among his anonymous but extremely miscellaneous belongings. In profound contrast to the rest of his exceedingly orderly, organized life, “Henry’s Magic Garage,” which finally was being emptied out this afternoon, resembled an abstract study in dyslexic architecture. Perhaps the master of the garage was the only person who knew where anything was. When Mr. Siegel was in the garage, he did not need noise. As far as he was concerned, the radio did not need to be turned on. Neither did the television. He was the consummate loner. His creativity was activity enough when he was manufacturing his homemade specialties.

Postscript

The Siegel family believed in recording precious moments on film, possibly for times such as these. Wherever Mrs. Siegel turns, she is surrounded by masses of family photos so varied in form they look as if they represent an array of different families.