November 16, 2023  |  By Cheryl Casey  |  Correspondent

*Lawrence “Lefty” Sayah. February 20, 1939 – October 30, 2023 | Photo by Gordon Miller*

Friends and family of Lawrence “Lefty” Sayah will gather this Sunday afternoon at St. Leo’s Hall to celebrate and bid farewell to a beloved community member and respected public servant. Sayah, 84, passed away unexpectedly at his Randall Street home on October 30.

Sayah began carving his mark into the Waterbury story as a teenager. Longtime friend, neighbor, and colleague in Village government, P. Howard “Skip” Flanders remembered seeing Sayah around town as a kid, particularly at Frank and Bud’s Service Station, “where Lefty hung out all the time and my father and grandfather got their cars repaired,” he recounted.

What 10-year-old Flanders didn’t yet grasp was Sayah’s reputation as “the terror on wheels,” referring to Sayah’s love for his convertible cars and fast driving. However, said Flanders, “by the time you got to high school in the ’50s and ’60s, you knew all about the exploits of the Sayah boy on the Dac Rowe cross country team.” He was referring to former Waterbury High School Principal and Coach Dascomb Rowe for whom the downtown park and playing fields off North Main Street are named today.

Lawrence “Lefty” Sayah is in the middle of this 1957 Waterbury High School track team photo from Waterbury Historical Society. Sitting left to right: Stephen Barney, Charles Sawtelle, Charles Allen; middle row: Louis Roy, Jack Chase, Donald Perry, Lawrence Sayah, Edward Hough, Larry Shepard, Raymond Belisle; third row: Principal Dascomb Rowe, John Grace, Raymond Sawtelle, Manager Alan Grout, James Dolloff, Martin Davis, Richard Almeida. Click to enlarge.

The two men became better acquainted as neighbors when Flanders moved to Elm Street in 1979. Sayah and his family lived on Randall Street and their daughters became close. Their friendship blossomed when Sayah joined Flanders and Everett Coffey as a Village trustee in 1996. “Ever since then, we attended many meetings together and just became good friends,” Flanders said. “I found out from working with Lefty that we were very much alike,” he added.

Sayah served as a Village trustee alongside Flanders until 2018 and as a commissioner of the Edward Farrar Utility District from 2018 until his death last month. For Flanders and others, Sayah’s impact on the community during those 27 years of elected service is unparalleled.

Village Trustee Lefty Sayah (center) whispers to Trustee Everett Coffey at the Annual Village Meeting in March 2011 as fellow Trustee Skip Flanders glances at the village report. Photo by Gordon Miller

EFUD Commissioner and former Village Trustee Natalie Sherman recalled Sayah as “an insanely loyal person to the village trustee responsibility, and then to the utility district.” In her first bid for trustee in 2011, said Sherman, Sayah “welcomed me to talk to him…which was so important because even though I had been in and around Waterbury for about 10 years before moving here, I still needed to have more perspectives.

“Lefty was always willing to share the pulse of Waterbury and how things have evolved. He was a good contributor to my little bank of knowledge. I always felt his kindness and politeness,” Sherman added.

In meetings, Sayah was typically quiet, but when he spoke, “He was on point, and you could tell he thought things through,” said Sherman. According to Flanders, Sayah “didn’t necessarily volunteer his opinion until you kind of gave him the floor and asked.”

Flanders reckoned that “Nobody ever accomplished more with less words than Lefty.”

Sayah was also known for being prepared at meetings. “He didn’t get into computers. He always had a folder with papers, but he always seemed to have the right paper at the right time,” recounted Flanders, wondering “how many times Lefty will open up this folder and there was the paper we were talking about that nobody else had.”

Sayah stood out as someone “always the most respectful of people’s opinions,” Flanders recalled. “Lefty was a big cog in the workings of the trustees” during difficult conversations about contentious issues, he explained.

In an email to Waterbury Roundabout, former Town Manager Bill Shepeluk contrasted Sayah’s “quiet and unassuming” presence in meetings with his eagerness to talk about the issues away from formal settings, especially when more than one meeting was necessary to reach a resolution. “He could talk your ear off about the issues that had been presented. He was full of questions and always sought to understand how a ‘yes’ vote would make things better,” Shepeluk recounted.

Calling Sayah “a true public servant, one with no ego,” Shepeluk noted, “The ‘better’ he [Sayah] was looking for was for the community and for the future.” He added that Sayah’s commitment to future generations of Waterbury residents drove his decision-making, “even while knowing costs which would be borne by him and others like him—older folk, less wealthy members of our community and so on—would not necessarily pay immediate dividends... He understood it was the right thing to do.”

Lefty Sayah (center) takes part in a community rally in January 2012 urging the state of Vermont to return its workforce to Waterbury after offices were flooded by Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011. Photo by Gordon Miller

Sayah’s “great gift of gab,” as Randall Street neighbor and current Select Board Chair Roger Clapp called it in an email to Waterbury Roundabout, didn’t just apply to his interest in Waterbury politics.

It applied to Waterbury—full stop. Sayah was a storyteller.

Clapp and his wife, Pam, regularly stroll the neighborhood with their dog. Clapp acknowledged that “sometimes we would calculate our walking route based on whether we could afford the requisite 20 minutes of conversation that ensued each time we happened to find him on his front porch.”

Sherman agreed, recalling the many times she sat with Sayah and his wife, Fran, in their kitchen or on their porch. “We’d talk about Waterbury. I heard lots of stories of growing up in Waterbury,” she said.

For Flanders, there was a lifetime of Waterbury stories to share with Sayah. One topic they often talked about was farming. “Lefty grew up on the farm on Route 100. He really valued that farm and his experience there,” he explained. Land that was the Sayah farm stretches along Vermont Route 100 in Waterbury Center between Guptil Road and Waterbury Veterinary Hospital. “I didn’t grow up on a farm but I had a grandfather who lived in Duxbury on a farm, and I spent summers there when I was a teenager, helping hay. I really loved the farming experience. So a lot of the time we were talking about those experiences and farming and living on a farm,” remembered Flanders.

“Lefty had 100 more interesting stories than I did,” Flanders added, even if Sayah could be “a stretcher of the truth.”

*Friends Lawrence “Lefty” Sayah and P. Howard “Skip” Flanders leave the municipal offices following the May 2022 Annual Meeting of the Edward Farrar Utility District. Photo by Gordon Miller*

*Lefty Sayah helps wrap and load Christmas trees at the annual sale in 2019 to benefit the Waterbury Area Food Shelf. Photo by Gordon Miller*

From his vantage on his front porch, Sayah loved to watch over “what was happening and was very supportive and interested in what the neighbors and their kids were doing,” said Flanders. “He talked about the years when his kids were growing up, seeing the kids play ball on the lawn at his house…and he really enjoyed Halloween, seeing all the kids.”

Many stories by and about Sayah had to do with Halloween. Randall and Elm Streets are known as the place for kids to be on Halloween, with sometimes more than 1,000 costumed candy-seekers ringing doorbells in any given year. Flanders, who lives on the corner of Elm and the north end of Randall, recalled how he and Sayah would always compare notes about who had the higher number of trick-or-treaters.

“I’d call him on the south end of Randall and he’d always say so many—we were usually pretty close but it seemed like he always had more kids,” said Flanders.

According to Clapp, “One poorly kept secret about Randall Street is that as soon as the trick-or-treaters fill their bags and head back to the hills, the skunks come in to replace them. Lefty was an expert skunk trapper and claimed to have captured a record high of 46 in one year. Most of us gained our skunking skills at Lefty's doorstep, including how best to give them swimming lessons without absorbing the fragrance.”

*Halloween 2023: Carved jack-o-lantern at the Mackey home on Randall Street pays tribute to their neighbor who passed away the prior day. Courtesy photo*

This year, the Halloween hijinks were bittersweet as Sayah passed away on Oct. 30. On Halloween night, however, others carried on the neighborhood tradition at his house. Family friends stood watch on the porch greeting trick-or-treaters and handing out candy. Across the street, a jack-o-lantern carved in Sayah’s honor sat on a neighbor’s porch.

“It’s hard to depart from somebody so kind,” said Sherman.

At the Nov. 6 joint meeting of the Waterbury Select Board and the Edward Farrar Utility District Board of Commissioners, Flanders introduced a Resolution of Sympathy that both boards adopted unanimously to honor Sayah. It acknowledges Sayah’s service to his hometown with a touch of humor that Sayah no doubt would appreciate.

“Lefty’s example of public service included kindness, politeness, respect and honesty creating an oxymoron exemplifying an ‘Honest Politician,’” it states.

It concludes with: “His passing is sorely felt, leaving a big hole in the heart of his family, his friends, his neighbors and the entire community of Waterbury.” The proclamation will be included in official municipal records and a copy will be given to Sayah’s family at his memorial service this weekend.

Read an obituary for Lawrence “Lefty” Sayah here. A celebration of his life takes place this Sunday, Nov. 19, at St. Leo’s Hall, 109 South Main St. in Waterbury. The event runs from 1 to 4 p.m., with family and friends sharing memories starting at 1:30 p.m.

Waterbury resident Cheryl Casey is a professor of communication at Champlain College and president of the Waterbury Historical Society.