Kathy Seigars is known as the person in Greenfield who “knows everyone,” and she’s the first person many people call if they need help.
“Kathy has the biggest heart of anyone I have ever met,” said Sharon Andrews, who has lived in Greenfield for six years and met Seigars through the Friends of the Greenfield Community Meetinghouse. “Literally all Kathy does is help people — her family, her friends, neighbors, anyone who needs a hand — that’s just the way she is.”
Katherine Heck, who served as town treasurer for 17 years, worked side by side with Seigars on countless local events, from Town Meeting to the Friends of the Meetinghouse’s Oktoberfest.
“In Greenfield, Kathy Seigars just embodies community spirit and what it means to be a ‘Hometown Hero.’ She has a genuine love for Greenfield community, and she has the belief that a strong community is built one act of service at a time,” Heck said.
Heck said that along with her all volunteer work for the town, Seigars helps in countless ways behind the scenes.
“Not everyone knows Kathy helped build the playground at the new elementary school, or that she grew and donated high-bush blueberries for the pies at the Blues-B-Q, every year, or that she always had school groups come to the Yankee Farmer,” Heck said. “She has made so many donations behind the scenes and just pitched in and helped when things needed to be done. She has had an impact on so many people and on our town.”
Longtime friend Linda Dodge, who is also a supervisor of the Checklist and a member of the Greenfield Fire Association, said Seigars is “just the heart of our town.”
“She’s not just a one-time volunteer; she’s always there for people when they need help. She’s always willing to give a ride to anyone to anywhere,” Dodge said.
Kathy and her husband, Steve, have lived in Greenfield for 41 years. They met when Kathy was working in Steve’s dental office in East Boston, where she grew up.
“My family still teases me about living in the ‘middle of nowhere’, but I love it here,” she says. “The second I walked into the house before we bought it, I knew it was my forever home.”
The Seigars raised five children in town. Kathy served as treasurer of the PTO for 5 years, and was a longtime Girl Scout troop leader. She has also served as also vice president of the Greenfield Historical Society, on the Budget Committee, as a Library Trustee, on the Fire Auxiliary, and as a Supervisor of the Checklist. She is also a founding board member of the Friends of the Greenfield Community Meetinghouse and has served as treasurer since the group launched in 2019.
For many years, Seigars worked as a caregiver and now as an assistant for a local woman with ALS. She helps care for three of her grandchildren, who live in Peterborough, and is perhaps the only person in New Hampshire who loves driving to Logan Airport in Boston. She also regularly drives people in need of transportation to Boston hospitals, just because she loves the drive and wants to help.
“I love going back home,” Seigars says. “Anyone I drive to the airport has a mandatory tour of East Boston, where I grew up.”
On her famous East Boston tour, Seigars talks about how the neighborhood has changed since she was a child.
“We never, ever thought about the fact that we had ‘waterfront property,’” Seigars said. “Our house was right on the harbor, looking right at the airport. Years later the prices in the area just went crazy and no one could believe it.”
When the Seigars children were young, Kathy began helping her father-in-law, Herbert Seigars, at the family’s farmstand, the Yankee Farmer, at Route 31 and New Boston Road. She worked there from 1991 to 2009.
While Seigars is now outgoing and gregarious, she says that wasn’t always the case.
“I used to be so shy,” she says. “My father-in-law, Herbert, would tell me, ‘We haven’t had a customer in three hours, can you just cover for me while I check on the greenhouse?’ And I swear, every time, the second he would go in the greenhouse, 10 people would pull in. I just wanted to go hide in the greenhouse, but I had to talk to them.”
Seigars says being forced to chat with customers at the farmstand brought her out of her shell.
“I really love people, and I realized I love talking to them. When you’re running a business, you have talk to people, you have to converse. I got to know so many people in town,” she said. “I would meet all the parents visiting their children at Crotched Mountain School. They would all stop. I looked forward to people coming back every summer after not seeing them all winter, and I would worry about the elderly people every year, and I would I always hope I would see them again.”
The Seigars are probably best known in the region as the owners of the “Yankee Siege” trebuchet, which they operated from 2001 to 2009 in the field across from the Yankee Farmer. Steve Seigars, who is a weekend inventor and engineer, built the Yankee Siege after becoming fascinated with medieval trebuchets, which are a type of catapult. The Seigars family planted a pumpkin field, built a “castle, ” and on fall weekends for eight years they hosted pumpkin-tossing events, attracting up to 500 people. The Yankee Siege was featured on many media outlets including the popular “MythBusters” show. “
After the farmstand closed and the Seigars stopped regularly demonstrating the trebuchet, Seigars says, she “missed seeing everyone in town.”
“That’s why I volunteered to be a supervisor. I missed seeing everyone, especially in fall and winter, ” she said. “I love meeting people, and you meet everyone as a Supervisor of the Checklist.”
Seigars’ favorite thing is spending time with grandchildren, and she is always up for an adventure. For the past three years, the whole family has taken part in Greenfield’s Fire and Ice parade, and Seigars and her grandchildren have won “best costume” three years in a row.
“We’re just very, very fortunate people. We’re so lucky and I’m so grateful to live here,” Seigars said. “I love my town.”
