Doing the right thing was expected of Siegfried and his older sister, who lived with their single mother, who later remarried. Their dad also was a big part of their upbringing, deciding after the end of his marriage to move two blocks away, in the same Memphis subdivision where his ex-wife and children lived.
“He was always such a sensitive, kind child,” said Siegfried’s mother, who still lives in Memphis. “From the time he was very, very young, he was always concerned about paying attention to other people’s feelings and trying to do what is right and treating people with respect and dignity. A lot of it is inherent in his personality.”
Though Siegfried eventually would earn his doctoral degree, he didn’t start out a scholar at the private school he attended, his mother said.
“It was a very rigid environment,” Thompson said. “He was the kid that always had papers falling out of his desk. At about the fourth grade, it got to be a pretty bad situation. The teacher was not very understanding of him and how he learned. He didn’t color within the lines like that school insisted he do, and I found him another home, and he thrived and gained confidence. I tell him I want to so much call his fourth-grade teacher and tell her he has his doctoral degree!”
Thompson said her mischievous, lighthearted son reminded her of Huckleberry Finn.
“He would have chores, one of which was mowing the yard, and I’d leave and come back and he’d be on the porch drinking tea, and his friend would be with the push mower. And I’d say, ‘How did you get out of that!’”
When he wasn’t persuading friends to do his chores, Siegfried was out on the baseball field, where he was a perennial member of several all-star teams, as an “excellent pitcher, good hitter and short stop,” said his mom, who noted that he got his nickname “Ziggy” – a takeoff on his last name – while playing sports.
“He ended up hurting his arm, so he just stopped after that. He jokes that he peaked at the age of 12.”
Siegfried attended the University of Memphis, where he met his future wife, Karen, a major in sports medicine. The two worked as athletic trainers, starting their days together at 5:30 in the morning for football workouts, not leaving the training room until 9 or 10 at night.
“We had a lot of fun together,” Mrs. Siegfried recalled. “One time, we were on the golf cart, setting up the field, and we clipped a tent pole that was stuck in the sprinkler line and it caused a volcanic eruption of water. We just sat there laughing and laughing.”
Thompson called her daughter-in-law the yin to her son’s yang, being as reserved as Siegfried is outgoing. They complement each other well, she said.
“One of the times I came to visit him and Karen after they were married, he was leaving the house and Karen and I were in the living room,” Thompson recalled. “And as he was walking out, he said, ‘Love you,’ and I said ‘Love you too, son.’ And then Karen said, ‘Love you.’ And I said, ‘Oh my God, you weren’t talking to me! He just laughed and said, ‘I love you both.’”
It was love that sustained the Siegfrieds through their struggle to start a family via the costly and emotionally draining odyssey of in-vitro fertilization, the only option open to them when they discovered their infertility issues.
“The first cycle didn’t work out, but then we found out later that we were pregnant with twins,” Mrs. Siegfried said. “We were ecstatic.”
But the Siegfrieds learned that “Twin B” had a serious birth defect and that the baby would be stillborn or die soon after birth. They consulted several neonatologists – “we were in denial,” Mrs. Siegfried said - but the grim prognosis did not change.
“That was really hard to hear,” Mrs. Siegfried said. “I don’t know how we did it, looking back on it now. We were so young, just 26 years old at the time.”
On Sept. 27, 2007, Will and Delilah Siegfried were born.
“Delilah lived for one hour and 37 minutes,” Mrs. Siegfried said. “And we got to hold her the entire time.”
With their faith and support from their parents, siblings and friends, the Siegfrieds worked through their grief and, in time, added to the family: son Sam, 9, and 4-year-old twin daughters, Miriam and Caroline.
“Delilah’s death changed us forever,” Siegfried said. “But we stuck together and got through it and have four healthy kids, which is awesome.”
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