Family Biography · Roma Mary Grace Historical Research
Uncle Barney, Bow Ties & the Open Road
The Life and Legend of Colonel Carl DeHaven Siegel, M.D.
Every once in a while, my cousins would refer to my Uncle Carl DeHaven Siegel as “Uncle Barney.” It finally sunk in one day that I had no idea why. When I hear Barney, I do not think of the upstanding, bow-tie-wearing, grandpa stand-in that was my uncle. Who was this Barney? When I asked them how he got the nickname, they said that Carl had initiated the nickname himself. Now I was intrigued. I asked my mother if she knew where it had come from. Nope. So I did what a historian does. I started digging.
The answer, it turned out, was exactly as fast and dashing as the man himself.
Who Was Barney Oldfield?
Berna Eli Oldfield, known everywhere as “Barney” was the most celebrated daredevil of early American automobile racing. In an era of unpaved roads and spectacularly unreliable technology, he became a household name by simply going faster than anyone thought possible.
His most famous feat came on June 15, 1903, at the Indianapolis Fair Grounds, where he became the first person in history to drive a mile a minute — sixty miles per hour, an almost incomprehensible speed at the time. He got his start the previous year behind the wheel of Henry Ford’s “999” racing car — a brute machine that used handlebars rather than a steering wheel — winning a five-mile race and launching a career that would span two decades.
By 1910, he had pushed his official speed record to 131.724 miles per hour at Daytona Beach, piloting a monstrous machine called the “Blitzen Benz.” He drove cars with names like the Winton Bullet, the Green Dragon, and the Golden Submarine. He retired from competition in 1918, then spent his later years, somewhat ironically, as a highway safety lecturer. Barney Oldfield died in Beverly Hills on October 4, 1946, at age 68. He had never, apparently, fully slowed down.
It was the driving. Of course it was the driving.
Uncle Carl loved to drive. Loved it with a devotion that bordered on the theological. He was an M.D., and I am fairly certain he was still convincing highway patrolmen that he was racing to save a life twenty or more years into retirement. Most family members who ever rode in a car with him can recall white-knuckled, harrowing moments when they were rather certain the life at risk was their own. The name of Barney Oldfield — the fastest man alive, the original daredevil of the open road — must have struck Carl as something like a personal aspiration. And so the nickname was born, bestowed by Carl upon himself, which tells you almost everything you need to know about the man’s sense of humor.
“Most family members who rode in a car with him recall harrowing, white-knuckled moments where they thought the life at risk was theirs.”
He wore racing gloves. Sleek leather ones. He was a dapper man — in my lifetime I rarely remember him in anything other than dress slacks, a well-ironed collared shirt, and always, always a bow tie. That bow tie was as much a part of him as his stethoscope or his dry wit. He looked like a man who had somewhere important to be, and he intended to get there ahead of schedule.
A Life Built for Speed — and Service
Carl DeHaven Siegel was born on January 4, 1915, on his father’s farm in Syracuse, Missouri, to Carl Christian and Mary Virginia (DeHaven) Siegel. From his earliest photographs, he was notorious for his scowl — a look that would follow him through family albums for decades, right up until the moment his wicked humor broke through it.
He was, from the start, a man of remarkable discipline and ambition. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Missouri in 1935, completed the MU School of Medicine in 1937, and graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical School in New York City in 1940. Through those years, he held a commission as an Infantry Reserve Lieutenant — and when the world called, he answered without hesitation.
His military career had begun formally on January 24, 1936, when he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Officer Reserve Corps, Infantry. In July 1941, he entered active duty with the United States Army as a Medical Officer, and after Pearl Harbor he volunteered for Foreign Service. He served in the Medical Corps for three and a half years across North Africa, the Atlantic and Pacific, with numerous deployments to Australia and the Philippines. He was promoted to Major before his discharge in 1945.
Executive Order · December 5, 1974
Under authority vested in the Governor of Missouri, Colonel Carl DeHaven Siegel was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for more than thirty-nine years of outstanding service to the State of Missouri and the Nation — signed by Governor Christopher Bond and attested by Secretary of State James Kirkpatrick.
After the war, he continued serving in the U.S. Army Reserve until June 1949, then entered the Missouri Army National Guard, where he served as Chief Physician, Division Surgeon, Senior Medical Officer, and in numerous command and headquarters roles across more than three additional decades. In December 1974, Governor Christopher Bond signed an Executive Order awarding Colonel Siegel the Missouri Meritorious Service Medal — recognition for thirty-nine-plus years of service that had carried him from a Missouri farm boy to one of the Guard’s most distinguished medical officers. The citation noted his initiative, aggressive participation, and great medical expertise, as well as his role as a continual “point of contact” between the National Guard and the civilian community he served.
The Doctor Will See You Now — Eventually
In civilian life, Carl was no less driven. He began his medical practice in Ellis in 1946, moved it to Sedalia, Missouri in 1948, then spent years as regional program director of the Medicare Program in Kansas City before earning a master’s degree in public health in 1969. He served as chief of outpatient services at the Kansas City Veterans Hospital, completed a residency in pathology at Tulane, finished that residency in Wichita at the University of Kansas Hospital, and then — because apparently one career was never going to be enough — worked part-time for the Business and Industry Health Group and the Federal Aviation Agency’s Flight Service Station. He was a fifty-year charter member of the Missouri Academy of Family Practice and received the Kansas City Metropolitan Medical Society’s award for fifty-one years of service. He finally retired in 1995. He was eighty-two years old.
He had also, somewhere in all of that, mastered the power nap. His daughter Carol remembered it clearly: when he would fall asleep in a chair, she would suggest he go to bed. His invariable answer was, “I’m just resting my eyes.” He seemed to have the ability to take power naps several times a day — a skill that, given the pace he kept, made a certain kind of sense.
“I’m just resting my eyes.” — Carl DeHaven Siegel, M.D., col., ret. presumably at rest between activities
When Uncle Barney Became Uncle Carl Again
His first wife, Ruth Sutcliffe, died on February 26, 1978, after thirty-five years of marriage. Carl spent nearly two decades as a widower. Then, on April 15, 1993 — at the age of eighty — he married Emily Krusekopf, a lovely woman from New Franklin, Missouri, who could match his intellect and his zest for life. There was, however, one significant difference between them.
Emily was ready to take life a little slower.
And so Uncle Barney, the white-knuckle terror of Missouri highways, found himself easing off the accelerator at last. Not entirely, of course. The racing gloves came off. The bow ties stayed on. And that wicked, irreplaceable humor never left him for a single day.
Carl DeHaven Siegel died on November 26, 1999, at his home in Kansas City. He had attended every one of my graduations, stood in as a grandparent when he was needed, and left behind a scholarship fund at the University of Missouri School of Medicine so that other young people might find their own open roads.
He was a Colonel, a doctor, a veteran of two theaters of war, a holder of the Missouri Meritorious Service Medal, and an eighty-year-old newlywed. But to us, he was mostly the man in the bow tie who drove like he had somewhere important to be — and always, always made it there.
We sure miss his dry wit. And the bow ties.
Though I did not know Dr. Siegel (which is the only form of address I ever used or even thought of with him) until I began dating his daughter, Carol, in 1994, I do cherish every interaction we ever had together.
One early one was the weekend Carol and I became engaged. Together, we visited Dr. Siegel and Emily at their house in Kansas City to both announce our intended union and to ask for his blessing on our plans. Of course, he readily gave it since Carol’s happiness was a paramount concern of his, but he did warn me “of what I was getting into.”
Then, in September of 1995, prior to our wedding–which he attended wearing his full-dress Colonel’s uniform (the affair was an American Civil War reenactor’s ceremony held at the home of a close reenactor friend using the 1863 Confederate Episcopal Book of Common Prayer), I think Dr. Siegel was pleased when I and one of my groomsmen–both dressed in our Confederate uniforms–gave him our sharpest salutes, which he returned in kind.
Other interactions with Dr. Siegel included a stop I made at his house just to say “hello” while I was on my way to Lee’s Summit, MO, to pick up my two sons and take them to a couple of Braves/Cardinals baseball games in St. Louis. It was a totally unnecessary stop on my part but one I thought he deserved just because of who he was. I always had great respect for Dr. Siegel and for what he accomplished in his life–especially the way in which he raised Carol.
Though I did not get to interact with Dr. Seigel much in his “Uncle Barney” guise, Carol has often recounted tales of trips she made with him. She makes it sound as though I really missed out on something.
I can attest to several things in your article Michelle… I was amazed at Uncle Carl’s ability to fall asleep sitting up, his head would nod a bit, but I never saw him fall over. His head seemed to lower between his shoulders while he dozed off. My dad would never wake him up, so we never heard the ‘resting my eyes’ comment, but my mom would always worry he’d fall.
I’m guessing that in 1996, or thereabout, I visited with my wife and 10 year old daughter, when he lived in Kansas City with Emily. We still recall our ride from the airport to his house. We stopped and had a great meal, after which he gave us a tour of Kansas City. He had a big car, maybe an Olds 98 or the biggest Buick, the three of us in the back seat- I never worried about any adults’ driving until we hit the curb, and neither Carl nor Emily appeared to be phased. In fact, I remember Emily reassuring us, as I got a bit worried the second curb we hit. Obviously, we made it without any accident…. and the next day he took us on a long tour to Columbia, and showed us some refrigerators in trees from the big flood in 1993- That drive was the most time I’d ever spent with Uncle Carl, and he shared lots of stories, and we got to know Emily as well. She was a wonderful, patient person. I wish I would have known Carl was in the Philippines during the war, as my wife is Philippina. Like my dad, he never mentioned the war at all. Somewhere I have some pictures of us at Carl’s KC house… before that, most of my memories were of Carl’s big house in Sedalia.
Michele, what a fun and interesting article about Unvle Carl! Yes, he was quite the character!
Hugs,
Audie