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Confederate Flag Flies In Tampa

James Farquhar/News Channel 8

The Sons of Confederate Veterans in Tampa this morning raised a giant Confederate flag on private property near the junction of Interstates 4 and 75.

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By CARLOS MONCADA | The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 14, 2008

TAMPA - As dozens of people sang "I Wish I Was in Dixie," a giant Confederate flag was raised this morning at one of Tampa's major crossroads.

It was the second time this month the group – the Sons of Confederate Veterans – hoisted the battle banner.

The flag, which measures 50 feet by 30 feet, was hoisted 139 feet above Tampa's newest Veterans park, at the junction of Interstates 4 and 75.

The event was orchestrated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group that formed more than 100 years ago. The organization owns the park property at the northwest corner of U.S. Highway 92 and I-75 overpass in east Tampa.

The group hopes to establish a lighted park and center that would memorialize the war lost by the South in 1865.

"We're putting this flag up to build a bridge," Marion Lambert, a south Tampa welder and member of the group, said this morning.

"This is our cause, to bring dialogue with the community," he said. "The people who have a negative outlook on what we're doing … they just have a closed mind or they're just ignorant and can't be educated. The closed mind is everybody's enemy, everybody's nemesis."

The flag, its hoisting coinciding with Flag Day, was to come down around 3 p.m. It was the third time the flag has gone up in recent months, Lambert said.

Among those in attendance was John Caldwell, who said his grandfather fought in the Civil War.

"That's what it means to me, my heritage," he said.

Wayne Sweat, a Sons of Confederate Veterans member, said he wanted to honor "these brave soldiers who fought during that time. This is very important to us."

At the previous flag raising, Lambert said the park will include 30 bronze plaques set in granite telling Civil War stories. The flag, he said, "is the eye-catcher," with the ultimate goal of drawing people to the memorial for a history lesson with a Southern slant.

The fundraising effort mounted by the Sons of Confederate Veterans for the Hillsborough site began two years ago.

If the idea is exposure, they'll get it. About 200,000 vehicles a day pass the spot, according to the organization's Web site.

Earlier this month, Hillsborough County Commissioner Kevin White expressed dismay when the flag was first raised

"I'm very surprised to hear that," he said. "It appears that that will be a very disturbing issue. It's a symbol [of racism] for a great number of people in our community.

"I realize that everybody's heritage needs to be respected and displayed in their own way," he said, "but this is not the way to bring the community together in a healing process. It's still an open wound."

The property was turned over to the group four years ago by a sympathetic landowner, according to a fundraising letter written in 2006 by John W. Adams, a lieutenant commander living in Deltona.

"Since January of 2004," Adams wrote in the letter, "we have meticulously done our work to acquire proper approval for site development from governmental planning and growth officials in Hillsborough County and to have the property legally zoned as a legal non-conforming lot for a 'lighted public park.' "

He said the Federal Aviation Administration has given its approval for a 139-foot flagpole, which will fly a 30-by-50-foot Confederate battle flag with "proper and sufficient lighting for nighttime illumination."

"The site will be dedicated to the Confederate Nation of 1861-1865," he wrote, "to its people, to its president, to the soldiers, sailors and marines of that nation and to the Cause of Freedom for which they fought."

In the most recent online issue of The Florida Blockade Runner, the organization's newsletter, Florida Division Commander Douglas D. Dawson urges members to donate so the Tampa site can be completed.

"We must raise money to pay for the pole and the shipping from Fort Worth, Texas," he writes. The cost of the pole and shipping it: $24,000.

The Florida division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans is a nonprofit corporation that has 53 chapters and more than 1,500 members, the organization's Web site states.

The Florida contingent is involved in numerous projects, including oversight of Confederate gravesite locations and preservation and conservation of the state's Confederate flag collection.

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