THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 7, 1994 TAG: 9412060162
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SMITHFIELD LENGTH: Long : 185 lines
WHEN THE TELEPHONE rang at the old, two-story house on North Mason Street a couple of weeks ago, Ellie Dashiell answered it and heard a message for her 93-year-old mother-in-law.
Sig Dashiell - author of the book, ``Smithfield: A Pictorial History,'' campaigner to save the old courthouse on Main Street, promoter of the town she has always lived in and loved - had been selected Citizen of the Year by the Smithfield Ruritan and Smithfield Rotary clubs.
When she relayed the pleasant news, Ellie said, the woman known affectionately by all as simply Sig, insisted she couldn't think of a single thing she had done to deserve the award.
``I didn't have the vaguest notion what they were talking about,'' Sig said later. ``I still can't think of one single thing I've done.''
After she'd had time to think about it, she said: ``It's certainly late enough in life. If I'm ever going to be a citizen, I guess it's high time.''
All the comments were typical of the down-to-earth woman who has been for years, in an informal sense, anyway, first lady of Smithfield.
Last week, never at a loss for words, Sig accepted the honor with her usual grace and humor.
Certainly, the Ruritans and Rotarians knew what they were doing.
In a press release issued prior to the dinner and awards ceremonies, the club called its honoree ``a one-woman Chamber of Commerce.''
``Poof,'' said Sig, waving her hand across her face. ``I can talk, if I have a bunch of color slides up there to talk about. But that's all I've done. I hope they don't ask me to make a speech. I can't make a speech. I can only talk.''
That ability is part of what makes her legendary.
Martha Segar Cofer Dashiell was born in the house where she lives now, in the same bedroom where she sleeps every night. She calls 111 North Mason ``earth's only paradise,'' and wherever she roams, her daughter-in-law said, she is always happiest when she is at home.
Sig was the youngest of three children. She can never recall being a very hard worker at anything. Mostly, she said, in the direct way she has of saying things, she has enjoyed life and had fun.
``Dancing is probably the only exercise I ever got,'' she said, patting her short, silver-colored curls. ``I danced and played my way through high school. I don't think I ever did work very hard.''
But she did do quite a lot of writing. At first, it was the frivolous kind. She kept a diary for at least 15 years when she was a girl. Much of that centered around social life in Smithfield during World War I.
``Soldiers used to come into Smithfield by the hundreds, by the thousands,'' she said. ``Everybody kept grabbing them up off the streets and taking them home and feeding them. They were treated royally. Word spread.''
She still remembers many of those young men, and she remembers the young men she dated and danced with during those years. But one man stands out in her memory, and there was never any doubt that she eventually would marry Harry Dashiell, 12 years her senior.
``I think I made up my mind when I was about 10 years old,'' Sig said. ``I was at Morgart's Beach, playing in the sand.''
Harry, at the time, must have just graduated from Virginia Military Institute, where he was a star football player and a cadet officer.
``He was walking down the beach with a girl,'' she said. ``He stopped and played with me. Then, he picked me up, sat me on his shoulders and waded out into the water.''
From that day, Sig said she never truly wanted to marry anybody else. But marriage to Harry was for Sig a goal, not a passion, she said.
In fact, she can only recall one time she was passionate about it.
``I was at a college dance somewhere,'' she said. ``And somebody else at the table said, `Did you hear Harry is getting married?' I said, `Over my dead body he is.' ''
Meanwhile, Sig went to college at Virginia Intermont in Bristol for a year.
``A lady came around soliciting people to come to Intermont,'' she recalled. ``I said, `I never heard of it. Where is it?' I finally said I guessed it was all right with me.''
Sig remembers that she studied ``some history, I guess. Nothing hard, like math,'' during that year. And she admits that she never had ``the vaguest idea'' of going all four years. She was far too busy going to dances at other colleges throughout the state.
``I remember peeping through the windows at the old Smithfield High School, watching Sig dance,'' said Helen King, a friend and fellow historian. ``Everybody loved to see her dance. Her days of dancing have kept her young.''
And Harry, it seems, was quite a dancer, too. That was part of the appeal. After World War I, he came home to Smithfield to run his father's dairy farm at Moonefield, his widow recalled. And in 1923, he married the girl who had had her eye on him for so many years.
The couple lived at the farm for years. They had two sons. But Sig, in her straightforward manner, recalled that she never milked a cow or did anything else that even resembled farm work.
Once, when the family was without a cook for a while, somebody made the mistake of complaining about her cooking. She opened a can of dog food, placed it on a silver platter and served it.
``I don't think they thought it was the least bit funny,'' she said, referring to her boys, Harry Jr. and Jack. ``Harry never said a word. He didn't expect much.''
He did expect something once though, when it came to beets he had grown.
``He brought them in the house and told me we could have them for dinner,'' she said. ``I sliced them up and put them on the table. When he took a bite, he wanted to know how I had cooked them.''
Her reply: ``I didn't know you were supposed to cook them.''
It wasn't until Harry sold the farm and the couple moved back into Smithfield that Sig became active in things about the town. She worked with the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, served as treasurer of that organization for years and was dedicated to saving the courthouse. She joined the Shakespeare Club. And she started writing for local newspapers.
A column she wrote for years in the Daily Press was so insightful, so colorful, where Smithfield's history is concerned, that every copy is preserved at the local library.
In 1977, she published her book about the town's history. She doesn't recall what moved her to do it, but she's glad she did. The stories in the book are as colorful as the woman who wrote them.
There is, and, thanks to Sig, forever will be - Tea War, the blind man who knew everybody in town by touching their faces, delivered groceries all over town without ever failing to get them to the right house and chased teasing children without bumping into anything.
And there was Crazy Lee, the man who ate bananas with the peels still on them, to the delight of the children in town. Every Smithfield home and every Smithfield family will live brightly forever in that book because of the woman who wrote it.
For the last several years, Sig has had her greatest delight simply in being who and what she is.
``She is down to earth, has never tried to keep up with anybody,'' her daughter-in-law said. ``She sets her own pace and lives with it.''
And if her sons are any gauge, she may be the original feminist, Ellie said, laughing.
``Both of her sons have allowed their wives to be very liberated,'' she said. ``They have never made many demands. They don't expect anything and do what they are supposed to do.''
Still, she is probably known as always the perfect lady, full of warm, sensitive humor, with an off-the-wall comment thrown in here and there for the fun of it.
``Who cares a tinker's damn about all of this anyway?'' Sig would like to know.
Much of Sig's social life today is wrapped around coffee each morning at the Twins' Restaurant downtown.
``You would think my soul's salvation depended on it,'' she said.
Thanks to good friends - several named Helen - she no longer has to walk the three blocks each morning. Since a hip started bothering her, she gets a ride most every day.
``Oh, I can hobble down there, if I have to,'' she said. ``But they're very good to me.''
And she enjoys having lunch every other Friday with one Helen - Helen King.
``Sig has never hurt anybody's feelings,'' that Helen said. ``In her book, she never breathed a word of gossip or scandal, although she knew a lot.''
Sig will be 94 on Jan. 10. When she turned 90, she refused to celebrate a birthday. She chose instead to celebrate an anniversary of 90 years in Smithfield.
When she turns 100, she said, she expects a parade down Main Street and several brass bands.
She never expected to be named Citizen of the Year. But that's been done. And, oh, yes, she is quite pleased.
``It was very nice of them,'' she said. ``Kind of them. But I really don't know of anything I've done.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Martha Segar Cofer Dashiell was born in the house where she lives
now, in the same bedroom where she sleeps every night.
Sig Dashiell's book, ``Smithfield: A Pictorial History,'' was
published in 1977. The stories in the book are as colorful as the
woman who wrote them.
What Sig says:
Regarding her age: ``I'm older than God.''
Also: ``Nobody on God's green Earth has ever lived as long as me.
They're going to have to knock me in the head on judgment day.''
Regarding her education: ``I have four years of college dances. I
think I went to every college in the state. I don't mean I went
there to study. I just went there to dance.''
About her voice: It's ``like a foghorn.''
About anything she knows nothing about: ``Why, I don't know a
thing more about that than I know about the immortality of the
soul.''
About her daily trips to the Twins' Restaurant: ``I don't know
why I think I have to come here every day. But I do.''
KEYWORDS: PROFILE by CNB