Saratoga News Sigal Drive could use historical revision Willys Peck Someday, when I get caught up on the obligations and duties associated with the half-dozen boards, committees or commissions to which I belong, I'd like to undertake a real civic cause, namely, adding a second "l" to the name "Sigal Drive" in Saratoga. Maybe I'll go even further and push for "de Sigall Drive." Or, in keeping with a current trend involving full biographical names on streets, "Josef de Sigall Drive." (Relax, Sigal Drive residents. I really won't be pushing for more than that added "l"). This would be in recognition of the internationally known portrait painter who lived on that road in the 1920s and '30s, and whose biographical sketch in the 1938-1939 Who's Who in America reads like a scenario for a Viennese operetta. Granted, Saratoga has had its share of celebrities without recognizing him, but I still think it's too bad that Sigall isn't numbered in that pantheon along with family members of John Brown of Harpers Ferry, Sen. James D. Phelan, author Kathleen Norris, artist Theodore Wores and, of course, the de Havilland girls, Olivia and Joan. In recounting the Sigall story, I am once again relying on material collected by my dad, one-time newspaperman Llewellyn B. Peck, along with my own rather fragmentary recollections from early youth. According to the "Who's Who" biography, Josef de Sigall was born May 18, 1892, in Brodi, Poland, and attended the Imperial and Royal Art Academy in Vienna and the Royal Art Academy in Munich. During World War I he served as a captain in the 4th Lancer Regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army. Wounded three times, he received military decorations from Austria, Germany and, it says here, Russia, although it doesn't say when (Russia was an adversary of Germany in the war). He painted the portraits of several European heads of state, including Kaiser Wilhelm, beginning in 1914. In 1922 he came to the United States and, although the documentary account is not clear, apparently settled in Saratoga not long after that. His elaborate house on Sigal(l) Drive, a repository of art, was destroyed by fire in September 1935, but he continued to occupy a cottage on the premises when he wasn't traveling. Sigall painted portraits of three U.S. presidents, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt, and in the San Francisco Bay Area he did portraits of Sen. Phelan; Ray Lyman Wilbur of Stanford University; T.S. Montgomery of San Jose, donor of the Civic Auditorium site; and George S. McMurtry of Los Gatos, civic leader and town treasurer chosen by his fellow townspeople for the honor. Montgomery, it should be noted, once owned the Saratoga property now occupied by Our Lady of Fatima Villa on Saratoga-Los Gatos Road, and it was he who had the stone wall built that still borders the thoroughfare. It was compatible with Sigall's artistic temperament that, in the biblical sense, he did not hide his light under a bushel; he liked his ink. For instance, when he did the Montgomery portrait in August 1937, there was a big spread in the San Jose Mercury Herald describing Sigall as a "world renowned portrait artist" who donated the portrait to the city in the hope that it would be the nucleus for a city art gallery. Earlier that year, Sigall, described by the Mercury Herald reporter as a "white haired, hard-bodied artist whose life has been one long series of adventures in the four corners of the globe," made an impassioned plea for San Jose, the state's first capital, to establish a museum to house relics of Spanish California and the Old West. I will continue the Josef de Sigall saga in a future Stereopticon article, touching on the pet lion with which the artist occasionally was seen in downtown Saratoga. Meanwhile, I will turn to the Department of Mea Culpa. In the Nov. 11 Stereopticon column, I was critical of a 1937 Mercury Herald headline concerning the capture of a couple of characters who subsequently admitted robbing the Saratoga Bank of America branch. The headline described them as "holdups," a term that I said pertained to the act, not the perpetrators. However, in doing some checking after the fact, I found that some, but not all, dictionaries allow "holdup" as a term for one who stages same. Still on culpa, but hold the mea: In that same Stereopticon column I complained that the deck, or subhead, broke (hyphenated) the words retur-ning and rob-bery between lines, definitely a no-no in today's scheme of things. But as my column appeared in print, these discrepancies did not appear; the deck head was quoted in perfect sequence, and my objection appeared pointless if not foolish. A word to aspiring newspaper writers: It's a jungle out there. [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, December 2, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.