Confederate flag advocate dead of apparent suicide

TEMPLE TERRACE -- Bart Siegel, an outspoken advocate for the giant Confederate flag raised near the intersection of I-4 and I-75, was found dead Thursday afternoon of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot. He was 50.

Temple Terrace police received a call about a deceased person at 1:10 p.m. and found Siegel's body at his home at 606 Vanderbaker Road. The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner has preliminarily classified his death as a suicide.

Siegel was born in New Jersey. But he became fascinated with the South when he moved to Florida. He was an accountant, a staunch Republican and an associate member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the group that raised the flag earlier this summer.

"He didn't have the actual genealogical linkage," said Siegel's friend and fellow Confederate activist Marion Lambert. "But he had the heart and soul of a Confederate."

--Alexandra Zayas, Times Staff Writer, azayas@sptimes.com