Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law Tuesday a transportation measure that dedicates the capital city airport as “Bobby Bowden-Tallahassee International Airport.”
The bill (SB 628) includes 16 road and facility dedications, including a coast-to-coast highway in South Florida for President Donald Trump.
DeSantis focused on Bowden during a bill signing ceremony in a field southeast of the airport, without addressing other parts the measure, which takes effect July 1.
“I can think of no better person from this community, that people looked up to for decades, to name Tallahassee International Airport after, than our renowned head coach of Florida State University, after all those years, Bobby Bowden,” DeSantis said.
Bowden coached FSU from 1976 to 2009, winning two national championships, 12 Atlantic Coast Conference championships, and finished as an AP top 5 team for 14 years. Bowden was 91 when he died in August 2021.
Sen. Corey Simon, a Tallahassee Republican who was a defensive lineman for FSU’s 1999 national championship-winning team, described Bowden as more than a football coach.
“Coach is what he did part-time,” Simon said. “He was dad to a lot of players like myself, because there was never a time that I couldn’t walk into his office and talk about issues that I was going through. Family issues. And he would listen.”
Simon noted that Bowden had a mantra of “faith, family and football.” “As of today, we can add another ‘F’ to that moniker, and that’s ‘flights’,” Simon said.
Bowden’s daughter, Ginger Bowden Madden, state attorney for the First Judicial Circuit of Florida, said the family is proud her father’s legacy will continue with the airport where his teams were often welcomed by crowds of fans.
The bill also designates other roads along Florida to be named after President Trump and other figures
The bill also dedicates 124 miles of State Road 80, which stretches from Palm Beach County to Lee County, as “President Donald J. Trump Highway.” State Road 295 between Duncan 8 Road and Gulf Beach Highway in Escambia County also becomes “Warrior Sacrifice Way.”
The Escambia County dedication honors three servicemembers killed in a terrorist attack at Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2019 — Mohammed Sameh Haitham, Joshua Kaleb Watson and Cameron Scott Walters.
Another road designation, for a portion of U.S. 41, between North Creek and Blackburn Point Road in Sarasota County, is “Dickey Betts Memorial Highway.”
Forrest Richard “Dickey” Betts, was a founding member of the Allman Brothers Band and is credited with writing the group’s biggest hit “Ramblin’ Man.”
Betts died in April 2024 in Osprey. He was 80.
The measure also names part of College Avenue in Tallahassee, from the historic Westcott Building in the center of the FSU campus east to South Monroe Street, as “President John Thrasher Memorial Boulevard.”
Thrasher, who died last May after a battle with cancer, served in the state House and the Senate before being tapped in 2014 as president of FSU. He earned his bachelor’s and law degrees from the university. He was 81 when he died.
The airport naming is the second this year for the Legislature.
DeSantis on March 30 signed a separate piece of legislation (HB 919) to begin the process to rename Palm Beach International Airport as “President Donald J. Trump International Airport.”
Another bill that has yet to be delivered to DeSantis (HB 33) designates part of S.W. 107th Avenue in Miami-Dade County after slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk and Commercial Boulevard within Lauderdale-by-the-Sea as “President Donald J. Trump Boulevard.”
The road and airport designation bill was one of six signed by DeSantis on Tuesday. One blocks records identifying crime victims and their family members (HB 1113), and another requires the state to use the federal schedule of classes for goods and services for trademark purposes (HB 679.
Three others (HB 4041, HB 4059, HB 4019) impose rules for compensation of health care providers to inmates at county jails in Indian River, Polk and Lake counties, respectively.
