Sigoda retires after 29 years
UPPER POTTSGROVE » For most of us, Monday night was a night like any othe.
It rained — again — and maybe some watched the Emmys or football.
But for Steve Sigoda, Monday was the night he said goodbye to Upper Pottsgrove Township, a township he has served as a police officer for 29 years.
Police Chief Francis Wheatley said when Sigoda started, he was one of only three officers on the force.
There were so few of them that for the first eight years of his career in Upper Pottsgrove, Sigoda worked every single weekend, “unless he asked for it off.”
During his tenure, he has served as the department’s “officer in charge” several times while commissioners conducted a search for a new police chief.
“It was an honor and a privilege to serve you. I love Upper Pottsgrove,” Sigoda told the
crowd of friends and wellwishers at Monday’s commissioners meeting.
Even some former commissioners, Herb Miller and John Bealer, showed up to thank Sigoda for his years of faithful service.
That service began with an advertisement in The Mercury.
When he started, married with young children, Sigoda said he was working full-time at Bally Case and Cooler, and part-time as a police officer in Macungie. But it was too much, so he stopped the police work for two years.
“But it was in me and I missed it, so I started taking civil service tests around the area, and I was doing pretty good on the tests, just not cracking the top five,” Sigoda said.
“So one day I was working second shift and lunch time came around and The Pottstown Mercury happened to be sitting there and I opened it up and saw Upper Pottsgrove was looking for an officer. So I said to one of my co-workers, ‘where’s Upper Pottsgrove?’”
When he finally found the township offices, he said the first person he met was Cindy Saylor, who also recently retired.
When Sigoda got the study materials, “for some reason I really studied and when I took the test, I was surprised, I got number one and that’s how I got started. So what I guess I’m saying is with this township, it was meant to be for me.”
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve worked under five different chiefs,” Sigoda said, “saving the best for last,” he added with a tip of his head in Wheatley’s direction and earning a laugh
from the crowd.
“When I got here, a lot of these developments weren’t here, Cherry Tree Farms, Turnberry Farms, Mauger’s Mill Estates, that was just all fields. Route 100 just had a grass strip in between and all these intersections were regulated with stop signs, and now they’re traffic lights,” said Sigoda.
“I had the easy part, I did my shifts, my wife took the brunt of it. She was working a full-time job, raising three
kids, I don’t know how she did it,” said Sigoda, earning his wife a round of applause.
One of those children grew up to be a police officer in Delaware.
“To the guy replacing me, I wish him lots of luck,” said Sigoda. “I hope he has a fantastic career like I did and I’m now passing the torch on to him.”
The new officer hired to replace Sigoda is Quinn Gauger.