As part of our 150th birthday, the Orlando Sentinel will reprint articles from our archives as part of our Monday Memories feature. Here are a few items from 50 years ago this week that appeared in the Sentinel-Star:
Bobby Bowden hired as Seminoles’ savior
TALLAHASSEE — Bobby Bowden, admitting a “great desire to return to Florida,” left a winning college football program at West Virginia Monday and signed a four-year contract as head coach at Florida State, one of the losingest teams in the nation of the last three years.
Bowden, head coach at West Virginia since 1970, succeeded Darrell Mudra, who was fired Jan. 4 after two losing seasons had caused sharp disputes with Florida State alumni. Over the last three years the Seminoles have won only four games while losing 29. They were 4-18 under Mudra.
Bowden, who holds the 14th best won-lost record among active college coaches, led the 17th-ranked Mountaineers to a 9-3 record and a 13-10 Peach Bowl victory over North Carolina State in 1975. He served as a Florida State assistant before going to West Virginia.
“I am pleased to be back here and I’ve had a great desire to return to Florida, Bowden told a news conference. “I’ve lived in the Southeast all my life and am glad to come back to what I consider home.”
Bowden, who made $35,000 a year at at West Virginia, signed a four-year contract at $37,500 a year. He said other benefits have not been settled Mudra was paid $30,000 a year.
Orlando women learn how to use a new self-service gas station aimed at female drivers in this January 1976 photo. (Sentinel file)
Station to let her fill ‘er up
Women’s lib has gone a step farther in Orlando.
Dottie Thornton shows Nell Vickers and Nell Cole that it no longer takes a man’s hand to gas up the car during a demonstration of dealer Robert Hughes’s new self-service gas station, The Gas Garden, 4255 W. Colonial Drive.
The station, complete with flowered landscaping, is designed for women and features lightweight nozzles and hoses. The station will be open 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week, starting Thursday.
Jailbreakers leave chief of police with red face
WINTER HAVEN — Winter Haven peace officers first learned about a Monday jailbreak by four of their prisoners from an out-of-town telephone call.
Police Chief Hamp Rogers admitted the breaking, when went unnoticed for approximately 7-1/2 hours , caused him some embarrassment. Rogers said the men walked out of the police department unnoticed about 3 a.m. Monday after prying the locks on several doors.
Orlando Sentinel 150th birthday logo for Monday Memory feature.
Police officers did not know the jail was short four men until a call from a West Palm Beach radio disc jockey was received about 10:30 a.m.
The disc jockey told police officers he had received a tip from an inmate in the Winter Haven jail who called him long distance to report four prisoners had escaped during the early morning hours.
Of the four who escaped two are brothers and a third was their cousin, the chief said. The fourth was unrelated and “evidently decided to go along for the ride.”
The escapees were identified as Bobby Lee Peppers, 20; his brother Philip Peppers, 24, both of Brandon; Marshall Batten, 23, of Tampa, a cousin of the Peppers and Oscar Powell, 18, of Delray Beach..