Sidney Jo Hertz Fiergola, mother, wife, attorney, wordsmith and bibliophile, died at her home in Louisville, Kentucky after a nine year battle with Wegener's granulomatosis with polyangiitis. She was 63.
Sidney was born on Feb. 9, 1958 in Havre, Montana. Her parents were Milton Hertz, of Mott, North Dakota, and Carol Ormiston Hertz, formerly of Edgeley; they predeceased her. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to the Hertz family homestead north of Mott. Sidney grew up on the farm, where she began her life-long love of animals, until her parents built a home in Mott where she was schooled until her senior year of high school.
In 1975, she enrolled at Shattuck-St. Mary's in Faribault, Minnesota. Though she was at Shattuck for only her senior year, she credited the school with having a great impact on her future educational endeavors. In 1976 she enrolled at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, where she received degrees in English and American Studies. During her junior year of college, she attended the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England and traveled extensively throughout Europe.
After graduating from Mount Holyoke, Sidney returned to North Dakota to attend law school at the University of North Dakota School of Law in Grand Forks, where she served on the Board of Editors of the North Dakota Law Review. She studied at the University of Oslo Faculty of Law in Oslo, Norway during the summer of 1982. After graduating in 1983, she began practicing law as an assistant to the Attorney General of North Dakota at the capitol in Bismarck. She regularly argued cases before the North Dakota Supreme Court and represented the State before state and federal courts, including the United States Supreme Court.
In 1985, she married Michael Fiergola, from Linton, North Dakota, then a partner in a Bismarck law firm. They had a son, Charles Michael, currently an attorney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a daughter, Olivia Taylor, now a teacher in Denver, Colorado. Their only grandchild, Genevieve Elizabeth Fiergola, was born shortly before her death.
In 1994, Sidney moved with her family to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she taught legal writing at Hamline University School of Law in St. Paul. While trained in the law, it was her grasp of language, written and spoken, that most distinguished her from her peers. She was a wordsmith, whether in legal writing, the negotiation and drafting of national medical contracts, the games of Jeopardy and The Wheel of Fortune, tackling the New York Times crossword puzzle, or simply composing a crisp and riveting text message. Sidney was also employed as a corporate contract manager by UnitedHealthcare, and later, she negotiated national contracts for the organ transplant program at Fairview University of Minnesota Medical Center.
Sidney's children were the apples of her eye. She actively supported their educational and athletic endeavors at Wayzata Public Schools. She joyfully baked cookies for the Wayzata High School football team, hosted carb-ups for the Varsity volleyball team, and chaperoned club volleyball teams at AAU national tournaments. She took special pride in watching her children in Minnesota State football and volleyball tournaments.
While both of her children attended the University of Minnesota, Sidney accepted a position with Humana Insurance Company at its corporate headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. She loved her new older historic home in the middle of horse and bourbon country, and had the pleasure of seeing her new team, the University of Louisville Cardinals, win the 2013 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship in Atlanta, Georgia. She and her husband enjoyed frequent travels around the country, Europe, and Mexico, including their favorite, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico which she and Michael first visited in 1988 when it was still a sleepy fishing village. At the time of her death, she was employed by Abbott Laboratories, a multinational medical device and healthcare company.
Along with her immediate family, she is survived by daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Herrick Fiergola, son-in-law, Travis Bernardy, sister Heather Hertz, brother-in-law Stan Blickensderfer, nephews Noah and Cade, brother Shane Hertz, parents-in-law Herb and Arlene Grenz, and extended Ormiston and Hertz families.
A memorial for Sidney will be held Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021 at 4 p.m. at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd on the Shattuck-St. Mary's campus, Fariboult, Minnesota. A reception will follow at the nearby Shattuck Inn. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in her memory to Shattuck-St. Mary's. No matter how far away she lived or traveled, Sidney always came home to the prairies of North Dakota. Her remains will be laid to rest in the cemetery alongside the now abandoned Neuburg Church where her great-grandfather preached within sight of the Hertz family farms.
