A Lot Has Happened in Bowie Since it Was Born 50 Years Ago

It’s the 50^th anniversary of the founding of Bowie this year. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Anyone baking a cake?

I’ve been paying municipal taxes here for only threes decades or so less than that. I spent my first five-or-so years as a Bowieite wandering around the alphabetical hodgepodge of streets in search of downtown. I still haven’t found it.

Like Bowie’s pioneers who moved into nice new bargain-priced Levitt houses, I too suffered the pains of moving into a recently built Levitt abode in southern Pointer Ridge. I still painfully recall the seas of mud that were supposed to be lawns, the shoddy house construction and the agony-inducing challenge of trying to get Levitt to make repairs. Oh, God, how I remember that!

The older houses in the north (where I now reside) were far better built, they say, and the Levitt people were easier to deal with back in the ‘60s. I wouldn’t know. I was living in Air Force quarters or off-base housing back then and didn’t care how well built any of it was. There were other matters on my mind.

Ten years later I was fighting with a Levitt flunkey over a missing rug, and I was told that if I didn’t like it here I should pack up and leave town. I didn’t, but the Levitt company did after the county barred it from building anything here again. I smiled.

The people in Pointer Ridge suffered through the merger of the builder with ITT, but they survived, which is more than can be said for the merger. I wonder if the people living in all those McMansions around town now suffered similar woes with their builders.

Bowie is a great community in which to live, unless you’re really into wild night life and posh French eateries (well, we do have the these days) The local movie complexes and the Big Box eateries that stretch like a row of Tums along Route 301 don’t quite cut it.

However, a few things here were livelier a couple of decades ago. City elections were certainly more interesting, and there were lots of social events (we even had an Oktoberfest at the old Bowie Race Track, which I went to now and then) that attracted large crowds. Today you’d be lucky to lure 20 residents to a beer blast, and even then you’d have to drive them there. But lots of those early residedents are getting along in years, or they’re gone.

The collective age of the City Council is down a bit from back then. Mayor Fred Robinson gets a senior citizen discount at , though. And Councilman Dennis Brady is getting closer to that discount. The mayor enjoys pointing out that he’s a week younger than I am, which isn’t saying much.

Bowie just doesn’t generate the city activism of the past, except for dog and cat people that form CLAW and demand unrealistic and costly quarters for wayward pooches and the like. The bigger the city gets (now over 53,000), the less people take an interest in the challenges it faces.

Well, they did vote for a police department, fortunately. The last election was about as exciting as talking to a hamburger. Granted, city pols these days don’t open kegs of amber liquid at campaign shindigs as they did in the past. Maybe that’s the problem.

During more recent years of city politics, some real turkeys managed to get themselves elected to city and county office, primarily because so few people had any interest in the elections; so these dolts won by default. Oh, if this community might again see some of the political liveliness of the past.

Our community is obviously booming. One day, if parking and planning authorities totally lose their minds (and they‘re already close), every inch of land here might be built over by voracious developers. Fortunately, bad economic times have slowed that. But only slowed it.

Being a journalist in this city for so long has been a unique experience. I’ve probably argued at one time or another with half the city’s population, but I’ve made many good friends as well. One encounter that is lodged deep within my memory banks involved a purveyor of carry-out chicken who for years vociferously complained about a column I wrote more than 25 years ago that included mention of chicken salad (you had to be there). He even came up to my table at an awards event and proceeded (years later) to chew me out as friends looked on in disbelief. The irony of it all was that his Belair Shopping Center establishment wasn’t even mentioned in the column. Maybe that was the problem.

I got used to that sort of thing. I have been accused, over nearly four decades, of being liberal, conservative, pro-abortion, anti-abortion, a Democrat, a Republican, a communist, anti-police, pro-police, reactionary, vicious, kindly, not read and widely read. Phew. I like the last accusation. One Bowie resident told me, years ago, I should move to Russia. I declined. But I had waited years for that one—it made my week.

We’ve had some interesting characters take root here. In particular, I recall the late state Sen. Ed Conroy (one of three people to hold that office; the others being Leo Green, who’s still active in various city matters, and Doug Peters, who I see only rarely.

For years, Ed was a walking Bowie Chamber of Commerce, bureau of tourism, and the city’s chief veteran. Ed did a lot for early Bowie, as did Leo Green, who succeeded him. He was, after all, or so he claimed, Bowie’s first resident. I had hair on my head in those days.

His Honor Judge Jerry Devlin, now supposedly retired but always filling in at courts around the state, was the longtime wit laureate of the State Legislature where he served for years. He has always been the city’s chronicler of sin and silliness.

One mayor who stands out from all the others I’ve known was the late Bill Wildman, an honest-to-goodness Bowie native who, in his later years, set up an unofficial City Hall at a restaurant in Bowie Plaza and whose table attracted loads of residents, mostly geezers with strong opinions. I miss Bill, who helped me sort out the arcane politics of the county.

The city in its time has sent forth a state lieutenant governor, a governor (way, way back), a murderer or two, an army of judges, a national chat show co-hostess and alleged singer, a slew of congressional aides, a few congressional candidates, a state GOP chairlady, a Watergate bugging victim (honest!), a few generals, a counterfeiter, many drug dealers, a pornographer, an abortion clinic bomber, an opera singer and many talented musicians, an exotic dancer and many civil servants (the uncivil variety too).

The city will no doubt contribute more names to the annals of the famous or infamous. And Mayor Robinson appears to be set as mayor for life.

More change in inevitable. The Bowie of the 21^st Century is a lot different from the Bowie I know nearly four decades (or even a decade) ago. And it’s going to become even more unrecognizable (we’re getting a huge new City Hall, for heaven’s sake). Who knows, maybe someday we’ll have an actual downtown, not a fake one.

Bowie is certainly more interesting than it was in the ’70s, though the crime-free environment of that era is missed, to put it mildly. But our new police department will soon be up to full capacity, and that will be a great deterrent to those out-of-town crooks who come here to wreak mayhem.

Here’s to progress, I guess. Happy birthday, Bowie.