Union Street family takes in the news: With their lives disrupted, they wonder why
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NORTHAMPTON - Glenn Siegel and his son, Arlo Siegel, were walking through the lobby of their temporary home, a hotel, Tuesday morning when someone at the front desk hailed them and told them the news.
Together, they looked at the newspaper, reading about the arrest of a man police now say is responsible for the fire that destroyed their home Dec. 27. "We were like, 'Oh, wow,'" Glenn Siegel said.
"I was so relieved, but right away I had a hundred other questions - who is this guy, why did he do it," Siegel said. "I heard he was from a long-standing Northampton family."
Since the arson spree Dec. 27 that claimed the lives of two men, and burned cars and homes, including one owned by Siegel and Laura Seftel, they have been overwhelmed attending to family needs great - like housing and clothing - and relatively small, like entertaining their sons, Arlo, 12, and Henry, 15, who were on vacation from school. Siegel also has had to find a place to craft his weekly jazz show, "Jazz in Silhouette," which is heard on WMUA FM 91.
The sheer trauma of the event, coupled with a crush of media from throughout the region, has meant neither parent has had time to consider who might have set their home ablaze. Even in rare quiet moments, they say, they have never focused on the perpetrator.
"I have not thought about (a suspect), ever," said Seftel. "I know a lot of people have been very focused on who did it. For whatever reason, my thoughts have been about taking care of immediate needs. I don't have a lot of energy to spare."
Siegel said no one in his family knows the suspect in police custody, Anthony P. Baye, 25, of 85 Hawley Street.
"I have been curious about who, or why. But strangely, I haven't been angry," he said. "If I had lost a family member, I'd be a little less placid. If I thought I had wronged someone and they came and set my house on fire, that would be hard.
"It's a random thing, like getting struck by lightning," he continued. "There's nothing I could have done differently."
Siegel has been inside his home of 18 years several times since the fire, which was set on a porch off the kitchen. He described standing inside his charred home, watching with a sense of wonder as snow drifted through a hole in the roof, and later, upstairs, catching a glimpse of blue - a cover - among the scorched furniture in a bedroom.
Days later, he began the painful process of salvaging personal items. Though most things are replaceable - "They're just things," he said - two charred items made his heart hurt. A blackened frame on a wall had held a colorized photograph of his maternal grandfather, Max Rosenberg. "It's probably over a hundred years old," Siegel said, guessing that Max was around 2 when the image was made. "It's all covered with soot. It's gone."
Also consumed was an autographed poster from a jazz piano series. Of the three names scrawled on the poster, those of well-known jazz artists Marilyn Crispell, Hilton Ruiz and Andrew Hill, Ruiz and Hill are dead.
"Those kinds of things," Siegel said quietly.
Coming to terms
Siegel said his boys have handled the events of the past week pretty well, given that the displaced family must build new routines.
"They were teenagers before this happened, and they're still teenagers," he said with a laugh. When a local restaurant offered free meals to the fire victims, he said, Arlo scampered over there and consumed a feast fit for a 12-year-old. "He had a burger, and fries, and a soda, and then they brought him a milkshake," Siegel said with a laugh. "He's finding the silver lining."
The family is finding a collective silver lining, buoyed by the outpouring of support from friends and strangers alike. "I've lived in this community for 30 years," Siegel said. "I have all these concentric circles of friends and communities. I loved Northampton before this. I love it even more now."
Asked about the suspect, Siegel and Seftel shared a sense of compassion.
"I feel very sorry for the perpetrator," Seftel said. "He must be very troubled. I don't feel scared or angry. However," she said with a laugh, "I've been pretty cranky to everyone else."
In Siegel's mind, nothing is to be gained from anger. "There's plenty of punishment," he said. "He doesn't need my scorn or ill will. At the end of the day, he'll still be in jail.
"I don't feel the need to go to the trial, or stare him in the eye," Siegel continued. "If he had hurt my children, I would feel differently.
"In some ways, I feel sorry for the guy. I don't know if he's feeling remorse, or even able to feel remorse. He's in his own world of pain. I'm glad he's off the street."
Deborah Oakley can be reached at doakley@gazettenet.com.
