by Glenn Tschimpke
Staff Writer
Aaron K. Bowden — regular kind of guy. In bed by 9 p.m. or so with a book in his hand. Asleep by 9:30, maybe 9:45. Too old for extreme sports like cliff diving or snowboarding and far too young to find Scrabble physically draining, Bowden has eased into a comfort zone in the latter half of his life. He enjoys the things that typical post mid-life crisis men enjoy: fishing, reading, traveling and just a little television sprinkled in.
Appointed to the 4th Judicial Circuit bench by Gov. Bob Martinez in October 1989, Bowden says he still has a few years left in him before retirement, capping over 30 years of legal service as a prosecutor, private practitioner and judge in Florida.
Although he was born in Indiana, Bowden grew up on Jacksonville’s Northside near Liberty Street. A child of the 1960s, Bowden did whatever he could to avoid becoming a casualty of the Vietnam War. After graduating from Landon High School, he left home for The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore to study English and philosophy.
The career path for an English major is quite narrowly focused. Bowden realized it when he discussed his future with his student advisor his senior year.
“There just isn’t a big market,” he said. “So I was talking to my faculty advisor and he asked me if I wanted to teach.”
Bowden hemmed and hawed. Teaching didn’t exactly make his hair tingle. And there was the military dangling a draft card with his name on it, too.
“So here I am, a senior in 1964,” remembers Bowden. “Everybody’s doing something. They’re going to medical school or they’re going to get an MBA or they’re going on to do this or they’re going on to do that. They said, ‘What are you going to do?’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I literally said, ‘I don’t know.’”
Back at his advisor’s office, the conversation built to a moderate crescendo.
“Well, you’re a natural for law school, Aaron,” said his advisor.
“Well, you know I thought about that,” replied Bowden.
“Well, you’re just a natural,” came the reinforcement. “You’ve got good verbal skills. You’ve got good writing skills. You’ve got the tools it takes to be a good lawyer.”
Plus, it was a good excuse to avoid the draft for a few more years. Thirty-seven years later, Bowden tells it like it is. There was no intrinsic juggernaut driving him to study law, no beckoning from the heavens, no paternal pressure.
“I went into law because the war was going on and the draft was going on and you had to have a student deferment.”
He came back to Florida to study law in Gainesville, earning his juris doctorate from the University of Florida in 1966.
Uncle Sam didn’t forget about Bowden during his years under the protective wing of higher education. In 1967, the United States Army sent him a warm invitation to join its ranks as an enlisted man. They dressed him, trained him, gave him a gun and promptly sent him to Vietnam.
Bowden’s first recollection of the experience?
“Well, I was there,” he deadpanned. “I was drafted out of law school and the Army made me a rifleman. I went over to Vietnam in 1968 as a rifleman, but I got myself assigned to an artillery battalion, Field Artillery 155. We towed howitzers, which increased my chances of survival dramatically.”
Bowden came home a year to the day from his arrival in Vietnam. On the surface, he seems to handle his memories very well, but is reserved in his assessment of the conflict.
“Well, Vietnam was sort of surreal in a way,” he began. “It was sort of like a civilian war. They were a proud people, fierce competitors with a long history of Vietnam being occupied.They were a very, very proud people. Stunning country. But you felt like you were over there with one hand tied behind your back the way the war was run. In our battalion, field artillery, we fired support for the light infantry. You had free fire zones, limited fire zones, no fire zones and all sorts of restrictions on the guns and what you could do. It was sort of frustrating . . . exasperating.”
For his efforts, Bowden was awarded the Bronze Star. Bowden left the military in 1969 and finally put his law degree to use in 1970 as an assistant U.S. attorney. In 1972, he started a four-year stint as an assistant state attorney, receiving an outstanding prosecutor award from the Tampa Police Department Homicide Division. In 1977, he moved on to private practice where he remained until his appointment to the circuit bench in 1989.
Along the way, he met his future wife, Vanesa, in a less-than-proud professional moment for Bowden. When asked how the two met, he sat back a moment and thought about his words until a wry grin escaped.
“I hired her as my secretary,” he said as if the irony just dawned on him. “I did! She was working for an insurance company and I hired her.”
Bowden and Vanesa will celebrate their 25th anniversary in January. The two have one daughter, Darisse, and a son from Vanesa’s previous marriage, Sean Abby.
Where Bowden trudged begrudgingly, Darisse, dances willingly.
“I had nothing to do with it,” he defends. “She is a second lieutenant [in the Army]. She is — are you ready for this — an Apache Longbow helicopter pilot. We thought when she was getting commissioned, she was going to go into something you might expect. She called one day and said, ‘Guess what? I got accepted into aviation.’ We were stunned.”
When he has time, Bowden likes to spend it with his two dogs, Rainy and Pepper, or saltwater fishing with his buddies.
“I’m lucky,” he said. “I have a friend who has a boat and four or five of us will go out on occasion and take his boat out.”
Bowden owns no boats himself, though. He said he’s learned his lesson.
“Yeah, I’ve owned a couple boats,” he laughed. “I’m not sure I’m going to own anymore. You get excited about it and take it out . . . it’s just a lot of expense and a lot of upkeep, particularly salt water. The corrosion! Ah, it’s just awful.”
Bowden and his wife like to travel to the quieter corners of America’s national parks for hikes and sightseeing. Despite his passion for solitude, you won’t see him plodding along the Appalachian Trail laden with a huge pack and sweat pouring from his brow onto scruffy, unshaven cheeks. He’s more of a casual hiker.
“I don’t do the real, real serious tough stuff with the backpack,” he explains. “We don’t do marathon hikes. We might do a three or four mile loop. But on rough terrain, that takes a long time.”
The shorter hikes may be for
good reason. “We got lost one time,” he chuckled. “We were out for our morning run. It was just a warm-up. We don’t go for longer than an hour. We come back in, have breakfast and plot out the day. We get up on the trail head and we take a wrong turn and we wind up on a four-mile loop and we got back about noon.”
Getting lost and taking it easy might be what Bowden has in mind for retirement in a few years. He says Jacksonville has grown a little big for his taste. Gainesville might be just the right size.
“You’ve got the amenities you need but it isn’t overwhelming,” he said. “Gainesville, to me, is very attractive. Because with the university there, you have all the cultural things available if you want them.”
It has all things available that Bowden likes: fishing, reading, traveling and just a little television sprinkled in.