Jesse Earle Bowden

Jesse Earle Bowden

Editor Emeritus, Pensacola News Journal

Jesse Earle Bowden, editor and vice president of the Pensacola News Journal (semi-retired) has combined his art of drawing and writing for fifty-five years as a Pensacola newspaper editor and author of 12 books. His latest book is Chipola Moon Rising, Seven West Florida Stories; a Landscape in Narrative.

He is a charter member of the West Florida Literary Federation's Literary Hall of Honor and is recognized as a pioneering crusader for Gulf Islands National Seashore and Pensacola's historic preservation movement. His editorials and cartoons promoting the preservation of Pensacola historic landmarks and coastal beachlands as a national park have been recognized with numerous honors.

Now editor emeritus of the News Journal, Bowden has illustrated editorials with his own cartoons and caricatures since 1965. He continues to write a Saturday editorial page column, draw a Sunday editorial cartoon and serve as a member of the Editorial Board.

In 1990, Bowden was asked to write his own profile for the national magazine, Cartoonist Profiles ("An Editor as His Own Cartoonist"), having been recognized by the editor, Jud Hurd, as the only senior newspaper editor who draws his own political cartoons.

He has illustrated the eleven books he has written and many others he has edited and illustrated with his own pen-an-ink sketches.

His journalism, fiction and illustrations have appeared in many books, magazines and other publications, and his drawings have been published in limited edition prints.

Bowden's novel, Look and Tremble, A Novel of West Florida, published June 2000 by Father & Son Publishing, Inc., Tallahassee, is based on characters and imagined stories from a fictional town in Chipola River Country during the 1930s and 1940s.

He grew up in Altha, a small Calhoun County town, the son of grocery-store merchant Jesse Walden and Earlene Elizabeth Bowden. He was born in 1928; as a journalism student at Florida State University, he was associate editor of the student newspaper The Florida Flambeau, and earned a Bachelor Science degree in journalism in 1951. He was editor of the Mountain Home AFB (Idaho) base newspaper, The Planesman, and served to the rank of captain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Bowden has been a resident of Pensacola since 1953. His writings‒‒fiction and nonfiction‒‒reflect the tapestry, people and history and heritage of West Florida. His latest book, Embrace an Autumnal Heart, is a collection of stories, many reflecting the West Florida heritage.

Bowden has been a pioneer and leader of Pensacola's historical preservation movement and has been honored as the "father" of Gulf Islands National Seashore, and designated an honorary National Park Ranger by William Penn Mott, Jr., director, National Park Service. Escambia County Commissioners renamed the Santa Rosa Island highway through the seashore the J. Earle Bowden Way.

In 1994, Bowden was named the first Malcolm B. Johnson Fellow in Public Affairs in the James Madison Institute, Tallahassee.

He was a charter member of the Historic Pensacola Preservation Board in 1967, serving as its second chairman. Since 1982 he has been Preservation Board chairman and was named Florida Preservationist of the Year in 1985 by the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation. The Preservation Board's headquarters building is named the J. Earle Bowden Building. In 2001, Bowden was named President of West Florida Preservation, Inc. when the HPPB program became a direct support organization under the University of West Florida.

In 1983, Bowden became an associate member of the Communication Arts faculty at the University of West Florida, teaching journalistic writing courses. And UWF, in 1985, presented the 1951 Florida State University graduate an honorary doctorate of humane letters. He has written and illustrated a student journalism guidebook, The Write Way: Editor's Guidebook for Students of Writing, published in 1990 by the Escambia County Journalism Educators Association. His textbook for UWF feature and editorial writing courses is also used by Escambia and Santa Rosa public school journalism teachers.

The author of the 1979 West Florida memoir, Always the Rivers Flow, and the 1989 pictorial history, Pensacola: Florida's First Place City, Bowden has helped write, edit and illustrate several books on Pensacola history. They include Florida in the Civil War: 1860 through Reconstruction (1960), Siege! Spain and Britain: Battle of Pensacola, March 9-May 8, 1781 (1981); Iron Horse in the Pinelands: Building West Florida's Railroad 1881-1883 (1982); Guardians on the Gulf and Pensacola: Spaniards to Space Age (1986). His writings and illustrations have appeared in other books and publications.

His 1994 book. Gulf Islands: The Sands of All, Preserving America's Largest National Seashore, was published by the Eastern Monument Association. Bowden recounts the Gulf Coast history and the community campaign he led to convince Congress to established the national park in 1971.

Bowden compiled his artwork in Earle Bowden: Drawing from an Editor's Life,1996), a 472-page collection of his editorial cartoons, illustrations and drawings from the 1950s to the 1990s.

"The Heathen," a chapter from his novel, Look and Tremble, was his first published fiction (Emerald Coast Review 1990) and represents the core of his story drawn from the characters in small town West Florida in a time now vanished. He followed with "The Ghost of Look 'n Tremble" (Emerald Coast Review 1991), "Whisper Out of the Dust'' (Emerald Coast Review, Volume IV, 1992), "Gently Into the Shadows" (Emerald Coast Review, Volume V, 1993), "Walk to the Widderwoman" (Emerald Coast Review, Volume VI, 1995) and Let This Be a Warning (Emerald Coast Review, Volume IX, 1999).

In 1990 he published an illustrated anthology of his editorial essays, titled When Your Reach September: An Editor's Essays and Other Episodic Echoes, described as a "sort of a sequel" to Always the Rivers Flow.

Since 1953 Bowden has served as sports editor, news editor of the evening Pensacola News, editorial page editor and in 1966 became editor-in-chief and chairman of the editorial board of the News Journal, serving in that capacity for thirty-one years. As editor emeritus, he writes a Saturday commentary column and draws editorial cartoons.

A graduate of Florida State University, former captain in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, Bowden is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in The World and Who's Who in U.S. Writers, Editors and Poets. Bowden has been named a FSU Distinguished Alumnus and has served on many state boards and commissions, including the State of Florida Advisory Council on Historical Preservation.

He served on the Board of Trustees of Pensacola Junior College and was a charter member and two-time president of the University of West Florida Foundation, which honored him as a Fellow in 1982. He served a record eight years as president of the Pensacola Historical Society. Since 1982 he has been chairman of the City of Pensacola Architectural Review Board. He served as president of the Pensacola Bay Area Coalition on Literacy.

Known as an active community leader and public speaker. Bowden won two national awards for editorial writing from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. He has been recognized with many community awards, among them the Pensacola Kiwanis Club Civic Award in 1981, Professional Leader of the Year (BIP Awards) in 1979 and three statewide honors from Florida Architects for his work in historic preservation.

He was named Distinguished Citizen of the Year by Pensacola Junior College in 1966, received the Law Day Liberty Bell Award in 1975, and was recognized with the PACE Pioneer Award for his Pensacola leadership in 1998.

In 1983, the Junior League of Pensacola established the J. Earle Bowden Junior Historian Award for student winners of the Florida History Fair in Escambia County.

He was general chairman for the Galvez Bicentennial Celebration in 1981 and was chosen by Mayor Vince Whibbs as chairman of the City of Pensacola Bicentennial Commission for the Constitution of the United States for the 1987 observance.

All profits from his classic West Florida book, Always the Rivers Flow, published by the University of West Florida Foundation in 1979, go to the J. Earle Bowden History Endowment, established by the UWF Foundation in1982.

Bowden first suggested Gulf Islands National Seashore through editorials, columns and cartoons in the early 1960s and led a movement to convince the community and the U.S. Congress of the potential of a national park in Pensacola harbor. From 1971‒‒the year the park was established‒‒to 1994 Bowden served as a member and vice chairman and two terms as chairman on the Gulf Islands Citizens Advisory Commission.

In addition, he's known across West Florida as a Civil War historian‒‒having served five years as president of the Civil War Round Table of Pensacola and helped write and edit Florida in the Civil War and Reconstruction, a Round Table book in 1960.

He wrote and illustrated a five-year Sunday News Journal series, "The Civil War One Hundred Years Ago Today" commemorating the Civil War Centennial in the 1960s. He was awarded the Southern Cross by the Pensacola Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1960. He is a frequent speaker on the War Between the States, West Florida and Pensacola history.

His editorial cartoons and essays have appeared on News Journal opinion pages since 1965.

From 1988 to 1991, Bowden hosted the News Journal monthly television show, "Editorially Speaking," on BLAB-TV.

Jesse Earle Bowden

2220 McCutchen Place

Pensacola, Florida 32503-3422

Telephone 850-433-6885

E-Mail: JEB2220@aol.com