Bowman Hines grew up in Pensacola. His grandparents, Dr. Louis Bowman and his wife, Sarah, raised him. Bo’s parents had died in a car accident on Interstate 10 when they were driving home from a Florida State University football game, back when head coach Bill Peterson finally had the team winning games. The Florida Highway Patrol found nine-year-old Bo strapped in the back by his seat belt, unharmed. “A miracle”—that’s how Dr. Lou described it on the front page of the Pensacola Herald.
Pensacolans watched young Bo grow up and were filled with admiration as he became an Eagle Scout, won the Optimist Speech contest, and was the star quarterback the year that Pensacola’s Booker T. Washington High Wildcats were state champions. Scholarship offers poured in. Of course, Bo chose Florida State. He was redshirted his freshman year and sat on the bench during the 1974 and 1975 seasons. In 1976, Coach Bobby Bowden was hired and switched Bo to linebacker. His senior year, FSU won ten games, lost two, and beat Texas Tech University in the Tangerine Bowl. Bo made second team All-American. The Pensacola Sports Association honored him as its college athlete of the year.
After graduating, Bo passed on the NFL draft and got an MBA while working as a graduate assistant for Coach Bowden. He came home to Pensacola and married Sue Eaton, another Pensacola native. Bishop Roberto Garcia presided over the wedding that rivaled Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s ceremony. Both weddings took place in July 1981. The wedding dress—designed and dreamed up by the French fashion designers who made spare money in New Orleans and Mobile during Mardi Gras—created a sensation.
When the couple returned from their Bali honeymoon, Bo bought a dump truck with a loan from his grandfather and began his road construction company, hauling gravel at first. He eventually built his own asphalt plant, which led to his dominance of much of the state, county, and city road work in Northwest Florida and South Alabama. Pensacola’s golden boy could do no wrong.
For years Bo chaired the Florida Panhandle Arts Council, a nonprofit organization that supported many of the cultural groups in the area, including the Pensacola Opera, Pensacola Little Theatre, Pensacola Symphony, and dozens of art galleries.
He and his wife Sue put on huge galas and auctions at the Saenger Theatre that raised thousands for the arts. These affairs always had elaborate silent auctions and lasted until two in the morning. Everyone came, and everyone enjoyed themselves—even old Phyllis Longfellow, the Pensacola Herald’s society columnist, who liked to tell people that Sue was tacky and Bo was nothing more than an overgrown fraternity boy.
The governor of Florida put Bo on the state arts commission. He honored Bo with the coveted Patron of Florida Culture Award, which got his handsome, smiling face on Florida Trend magazine.
In March 2010, I had decided to write a personal profile of my friend Bo for the Insider and maybe tease him a little, but also show how much his efforts meant to the arts and culture in Pensacola. However, I found I had a problem. Some of the executive directors of the cultural groups gave me less than glowing reviews of my friend. They replied to my questions with stilted answers, and a few board members didn’t even return my phone calls.
I finally tracked down a former art gallery director who had moved to St. Louis. He told me the reason few wanted to talk about Bo Hines and the Florida Panhandle Arts Council. He said Bo’s Arts Council was a sham.
Apparently little of the money ever made it to the art galleries, opera, symphony, or community theater. When the arts groups received their grant checks from the Arts Council, they were dated months earlier, as if they had sat in a desk drawer somewhere before being mailed. The amounts were often much less than promised. But since this was Bo Hines, the millionaire road contractor, they assumed there was some mistake.
When the executive directors and board chairs of the cultural groups called him, Bo always had an excuse about the delay. And for the first year or so, the checks kept coming, even if they were late and less than expected. Then the payments stopped altogether. Payroll checks bounced. Rent and utility bills fell behind. My source still had paychecks that he couldn’t cash.
When I asked about it, Bo tried to bluff his way through my questions. When I told him that this wasn’t a smart move, my normally affable friend suddenly became guarded and evasive. Then he quit taking my calls. I felt like he was daring me to write the article.
Bo would understand my predicament. I had friends and, more critically, advertisers, who wouldn’t appreciate this story, even if I proved every allegation. The easiest course of action would have been to walk away and hope the Pensacola Herald picked up the story.
My closest friend in Pensacola, Dare Evans, begged me to put off publishing the article. She and I had known each other since our freshman year at Ole Miss. I had a few high school pals that I occasionally called to catch up with, mostly on birthdays and during the Christmas holidays, but Dare was a constant in my life. Dare was my sounding board, my fiercest defender, and one of the few people who really knew me.
Dare felt I needed to find the Arts Council executive director and interview her. She had two valid reasons. The first was that no matter how well I wrote it, Dare knew the article was going to cost me advertisers, something I really couldn’t afford.
“Walker, why are you so hell bent on self-destruction?” Dare said over glasses of wine at Blazzues after she had read my first draft. “I don’t understand your death wish mentality. Do you want the town to hate you? Take the time to get it right.”
“Dammit, I do have it right,” I said. “Bo stole that money and the executive
