Joe Siegfried

Joe was born on St. Patrick's Day, 1937, and died July 19, 2024 in Peoria, at age 87. He died despite employing his substantial intellect to overcome increasing age-related physical difficulties, over an extended period, in order to regularly get out and be with family and friends.
Childhood
Joe was the son of Arnold F. and Dorothy I. [McAfoos-] Siegfried of rural Dunlap - in the Mt. Hawley area, now solidly Peoria. He was the eldest of 5, named for his father and his uncle Joe. His parents had moved here from the original family homestead in the village of Pleasant, outside Sherwood, North Dakota.
One might say Joe had a rather eccentric path through life. He and his siblings grew up just north of Peoria amidst a rich rural environment, where animals and crops were raised on a small plot of land which included a playground of several hundred acres of wood accommodating, in addition to his family, a few interesting recluses living off the land. As a child he sold encyclopedias to force himself to successfully overcome a tendency toward introversion. This also allowed him to procure an entire set of the then very expensive Encyclopedia Brittanica which he read in its entirety. His youngest brother Jerry recalls learning from Joe, his strategy of effective education through extreme challenge, which Jerry later used to forge his way when employed as a manager at Outward Bound Survival School and during his service in the Vietnam War. Joe also enjoyed lifelong, good-natured, intellectual rivalry with his brother Robert.
Education
He attended Wilder-Waite consolidated grade school in Alta and subsequently was a 1955 graduate of Dunlap High School. Joe received their DAR good citizenship award, was president of the school band and chorus, president of his sophomore class, president of the Latin club, business manager of the yearbook, and represented his school at Illini Boys State. He subsequently attended Bradley University, majoring in Biology and studying music under, and a favorite of, the university's revered organist Grace Scatterday Bone.
Joe was always deeply interested in music, and could detect perfect pitch. He had a high level of proficiency in, and played organ at numerous churches in the Peoria area - including St Paul's Episcopal and First Federated. He had expert level knowledge of music theory, especially abstract musical concepts such as tuning and tonal systems, scales, consonance and dissonance. This allowed him to support and justify his rather strong opinions on its various aspects. For the better part of his life Joe kept an organ and piano across from each other in his home.
Military Training
While at Bradley, there was compulsory participation in ROTC for all male students. Most of the ROTC guys were trying very hard to get in the Air Force. However, due to lack of interest, Joe missed all the very competitive ROTC classes resulting in him failing everything. Ultimately however, Joe aced a short language test, instantly bringing him to the front of the queue and greatly piquing the Air Force's interest. Though the Air Force was extremely interested in him, Joe couldn't qualify due to vision challenges. The powers-that-were, though, felt they desperately had to have him regardless. They sent him to Chicago for his physical with a letter pinned to his chest saying we need this guy passed through. Though there was pushback from the doctors, he was ultimately enlisted.
In April 1958, it was off to basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. While there, due to his arches, Joe was prohibited from participating in the training by his commanding officer – who questioned how he passed his physical. Instead, he was tasked with playing piano and organ for base schools, chapel, and events. In spite of this, Joe was named the outstanding trainee at Lackland AFB, and also awarded the American Spirit of Honor Medal. This medal was voted on across all branches of service and awarded for outstanding qualities of leadership - expressing honor, initiative, loyalty - and setting a high example to his Comrades in Arms. Due to this award, and the military's general order regarding the precedence of forces in parades, Joe in his thick glasses, deferentially marched ahead of all other military parade members - including officers, all other cadets, all active duty, and injured war heroes (as it exceeded the Purple Heart).
From there, Joe was enrolled in the Serbo-Croatian Program at the US Air Force Institute of Technology language school of Syracuse University which he completed in April 1959. While at Syracuse, he escaped a deadly flash-fire in the language school dormitory.
Military Service
Subsequently, Joe was assigned to the 6910th Radio Group, Mobile (RGM) of the United States Air Force Security Service (USAFFSS), and in July 1959 posted to the Sembach Air Base, Germany, living in nearby Kaiserslautern.
He worked in a top-secret Air Force Intelligence unit as a language expert and voice intercept processing specialist. They had a massive antenna field and conducted covert intercept and first echelon analysis and transcription. His group first set up its operations in relatively nice, but very hot, trailers next to the flight line, eventually moving into wooden buildings. This was during the Cold War when knowing what the Eastern Bloc was up to, behind the Iron Curtain, was absolutely crucial to the interests and safety of the United States. The Soviets knew about some aspects of the program, but many key features have always remained secret.
His work was highly clandestine. He worked at the Top Secret Code Word security level. In fact, when U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara visited his facility, they had to cover all their stuff, as even McNamara did not have sufficiently high clearance to know the specifics of what they were up to. For decades Joe would not talk about his service. Technically, he was forever banned from travelling to certain prohibited countries - due to his knowledge of certain classified highly sensitive information. It was only very recently that he shared details of his assignment.
Most of his compatriots had to perform work while airborne - this could be very dangerous. For instance - in the 6911th Radio Group Mobile, the unit immediately following Joe's - all 11 of the linguists were killed, along with 6 flight crew, in the now declassified incident wherein the Russians tricked their clandestine Lockheed C-130A-II Dreamboat radio intelligence reconnaissance aircraft into violating Soviet airspace. They accomplished this by duplicating the frequency, and greatly increasing the power, of the radio navigation beacon they were using to draw the aircraft into Soviet Armenian airspace where a pair of MiG 17s shot it down. The secret nature of the program prevented public recognition or honors for those lost at the time.
Uniquely, Joe was spared this hazard as his poor vision prohibited him from flying - so he had to perform all his duties from the base. However this, in turn, resulted in him losing out of the extra flight pay the rest of his unit received. To make up for this, and due to his exceptional work performance, his commanding officer treated Joe especially well to compensate. He gave Joe extra privileges - allowing Joe to travel off-base, wearing civilian clothes, and travel to any NATO countries whenever he was off duty - only avoiding proximity of borders with any Eastern bloc countries. Joe took full advantage of these privileges - attending hundreds of operas in Germany (which had the most) and other parts of Europe during his nearly 3 years stationed near Frankfurt.
His unit recorded 24 hours a day. They started out with onionskin and carbon paper later transitioning to continuous feed carbon paper. Joe was one of the very few transcribers who could work in real-time, rather than using post-transmission recordings. Joe liked to mention that one of the key pieces allowing him to do this was the new IBM Selectric typewriter which was covertly introduced to his unit some time before going public. Traditional typewriters did not lend themselves to this duty as their keys would stick and jam at the typing speeds he was using, so could only be used with the recordings. He also devised an invaluable technique for tracking aircraft locations through his intercepts.
Joe was exceptionally rated, operating multiple positions, utilizing three different languages. On his own initiative, he acquired a working knowledge of two languages in addition to his primary. He mastered his primary Serbo-Croatian, eventually Czech, which they really needed, and finally Polish - which Joe translated for months before they even realized they had someone doing it. This was considered truly commendable and allowed him to fill in at any position single-handedly causing his to remain the top-rated unit. The quality of his work was considered unequaled – he was rated the top R/T Operator in his unit for multiple quarters. His reliability and loyalty were also considered above reproach.
In May 1961, the 6910th RGM relocated from Sembach to Darmstadt. They moved into a brand new nicely equipped and air-conditioned building from their old wooden place at Sembach - a far cry from the hot trailers they had started out in. Their unit was extremely active during this period, intercepting information related to the Berlin Wall erected in August 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Of course, Darmstadt was even closer to Frankfurt, and the trains leading to the rest of Europe. This made Joe's diversions far easier. He ultimately attended over 600 operas in various parts of Europe.
He was considered a great asset to the service and his commander went to very great lengths trying to retain him, however in December 1962, it was time to head home. In another fortuitous turn, Joe got stuck in Frankfurt due to all aircraft being tied up evacuating Americans from North Africa - allowing several more experiences, and a little more opera. Eventually he made it back through Teterboro, New Jersey.
His secret unit has held several reunions over the years all of which Joe attended - in Syracuse, Hilton Head Island, and finally the last (their 46th anniversary) in Savannah in 2004.
Post Military
Joe served until December 1962, followed by the USAF Reserve, then honorably discharged in April 1964. After leaving the Air Force, Joe joined Caterpillar where he worked for over 30 years. His vocation was of little concern to him and always seen as simply a means to an end – travel, opera, books, gifts. While at Caterpillar Joe always preferred working second shift, and sleeping in stretches. This best suited his lifestyle, allowing him to visit his nightly haunts and meet other second shifters, from Ozark Airlines, for daily brunch. It was there that he read 4 or 5 major newspapers every day for decades. Newspapers then had far more volume and depth than they do today. This allowed Joe to develop, and further expanded, his extraordinarily broad knowledge of science, history, arts, medicine, and current events. He was also well known for forwarding personally interesting targeted newspaper articles to his wide pool of friends and acquaintances.
Joe very likely, had the largest Maria Callas collection in the United States - a massive trove of organized material - including many original recordings he created when he was attending opera throughout Europe. He followed Callas around Europe for years at the height of her fame during his time in the Air Force while he was operating clandestinely in Europe. He also eventually attended EVERY performance of her U.S. farewell tour.
Trivia and post-retirement
Joe retired in 1995. He received surgery successfully correcting his myopia - no more glasses. Then, among other things, put his vast pool of esoteric knowledge to work competing in and dominating local and national Trivia competition. For a couple decades he played in local in-person team competition as a member of the "Scintillae" team frequently snatching first place - together with his good friends and team members Rick, Jerry (the judge) and his wife Liz, and the professor - at numerous local establishments, including the Fieldhouse, Olympia, MD's, Old Chicago, Buffalo Wild Wings, and Kenny's. In recent years, he loved spending time at Kenny's Westside where they were always extremely accommodating - helping him with parking, getting inside, and ejecting anyone who might have taken his reserved seat. He would not play without a Styrofoam (not porcelain) cup of coffee in-hand. He also, for a long time, played nationally on the once formidable BuzzTime network as "Sieg" where he accumulated tens of millions of points and often ranked in the top ten players across the entire network - which included locations in the United States, Canada and Europe. This would frequently put "Peoria" on the top-ten screen among the other winners who were generally in major national and international cities.
Joe was known for showering gifts upon all his relatives' and friends' kids and grandkids, as well as to the establishments he visited and their staff. He pretended to be annoyed by, but like all Siegfrieds, actually had great affection for pets and animals of all kinds. He was a gourmand and superb improvisational cook - always contributing to any occasion to which he was invited. Both a bibliophile and audiophile, he had a massive personal library and collection of music on various media. On trips, Joe preferred obscure shortcuts devised on paper maps and did not suffer GPS recommendations lightly. His directions would almost certainly conflict, resulting in a very heated argument between him and the GPS unit's synthesized voice.
Joe was preceded in death by his parents, his brother the late Dr Charles Siegfried of Shenandoah, Iowa, and his cousins Donna (Siegfried) Kinne, of Peoria, and Karen (Siegfried-Dunn) Houser of Mahomet, and his nephew (cousin) Brett Miller of Satanta, Kansas. He is survived by his brothers Robert (& Kay) Siegfried of Apple Valley, Minnesota, Jerry (& Mary) Siegfried of West Peoria, and his sister Barbara (& Tom) Williamson of Tremont and his cousin Bonnie (& Dale) Baughman of Kismet, Kansas. Joe was an extremely doting and generous uncle to his numerous surviving nieces and nephews, whose birthdays, holidays, and special occasions he always remembered - Kristina (& Tim) Miller of Inver Grove, Minnesota, Dr. Tracy Siegfried of Newport Beach, California, Michael (& Paige) Siegfried of Cokato, Minnesota, Shauna Lyn (& Matt) Willemssen of Greenfield, Minnesota, David (& Barbara) Brown of Chandler, Arizona, Michael (& Thavy) Brown of Maple Valley, Washinton, Daniel (& Leah) Siegfried of Des Moines, Iowa, and Eric (& Jen) Siegfried of Missoula, Montana. Also, Kevin (& Ashley) Kinne of Peoria, Cindy Macmillan of Frederick, Maryland, Michael (& Perla) Kinne of New Richmond, Ohio, Shelly (& Mike) Kirby of Kismet, Kansas, Amy (& Dusty) Turner of Edmund, Oklahoma, and Chrissy (Dunn) Shepherd of Mahomet, all of whom he considered nephews and nieces, though really cousins. Also, their progeny, countless great-nephews, great-nieces, and cousins. He had a special place in his heart for, and is also survived by, his two young "grand-nieces" (actually cousins, twice removed) Julia & Renée Kinne, who always lived nearby and whom he visited and doted on regularly. Finally, he is survived by his Trivia partners and other friends about town.
Graveside services were held at 1:30 p.m., Tuesday, August 13th, 2024, at Springdale Cemetery, where Joe was interred in Hillcrest overlooking his parents in Valley View. There was also an informal celebration-of-life held at Joe's favorite haunt Kenny's Westside Pub. Following the service, family and friends gathered there.
Funeral arrangements were made under the direction and care of Wright & Salmon Mortuary. (309-688-4441)