Personal reflections from a globe trekking journey around the world with the great football legend, his passion for World War II history, and his impact on the world outside of football, from his film director.

Sunday, August 8, the world lost one of the greatest coaches in college football history and a man of immense faith who modeled kindness and decency both on and off the field. After a two month battle with pancreatic cancer, famed FSU Coach Bobby Bowden has died at the age of 91.

Beloved to millions, Bobby Bowden was the one-time winningest coach in college football history. He had 33 winning seasons for the Florida State Seminoles, 12 ACC titles, 2 national championships, and 411 wins as head coach. He was a devoted husband and father to six children, three of whom distinguished themselves in college football leadership. Beyond his flesh and blood family, Bobby Bowden was a father figure to many players, more than a few of whom came to college football from broken homes.

Much will be said about this great man who dominated collegiate football with an unsurpassed half century legacy of excellence both on and off the gridiron. My own reflections are personal. They offer a window into a lesser-known part of the life of this great man. Over the course of two years, I had the honor of being Coach Bowden’s director, writer, and comrade on a journey around the world from Florida to France to Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, to produce Bobby Bowden Goes to War, a television program (not yet aired) inspired by his passion for WWII history and featuring Coach Bowden as host.

Over the course of my own 10,000 mile journey with Coach Bowden, three of his many qualities shaped my perspective on the true greatness of this man - his deep gratitude, his childlike enthusiasm, and his infectious optimism.

Football and Warfare

Some years following the conclusion of his career at FSU, Coach’s thoughts turned to another legacy which brought his childhood full circle with the present. During the waning days of WWII, Coach Bowden had been a sickly teenager who spent a lot of time in bed listening to news reports from the front line of the war. He devoured the strategies and military philosophies of famous WWII generals including MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton. A voracious reader, Coach studied their lives and read their books. Later in life he even traveled to Germany to spend a few days interviewing the son of famed tank commander Erwin Rommel whose father was ultimately executed for his role in the plot to kill Hitler.

Coach described to me that as a teen, he had been worried, “Are they going to be good enough to conquer the world and come over here? That was our biggest concern. Are they going to whip Britain, whip Russia, whip everybody over there, and then get over here and get after us? And that put a little fear in us.”

After the war, his concern turned to captivation. “I was always fascinated with the war, and I read everything I could find on it. Whether it was a newspaper or a book. Or whether it was a movie.”

By the time he started his career in football, Coach Bowden embraced an optimism that if he applied the tested and true strategies and leadership styles of his favorite generals to coaching, surely he could achieve success in the stadium. He was right.

He saw the link between the gridiron and the battle field. “The connection between football and war is the preparation,” he explained to me. “War can’t be matched, you know, with football. In football you might have an injury; you might hurt a knee or a shoulder; or have a concussion. But in war, you are talking about life and death, so that part is not equal. But the preparation is a lot alike because, in football practice, we try to push those guys right to the edge. We don’t want to push them over, but push them right to the edge. Drive them, so their bodies will become disciplined, and they will see the price they have to pay if they want to win. The Army, Navy, Airforce, and Marines are doing the same thing….”

This relationship between football and warfare, their similarities and differences, provided the context for Coach Bowden’s television show. It allowed him to merge his two great passions - football and WWII history.

Father and Son

Joining his father for the show was Tommy Bowden, former head coach at Clemson University. These two were known for one of the most unusual rivalries in college football history — the Bowden Bowl. It was the first time a father and son, both head coaches, had competed against each other at the national level.

“For sixty years, I watched my father study World War II. Every time I saw him, he was reading a book on World War II. Next to the Bible, he’s probably read more on World War II than anything else,” Tommy told me. “As a young coach, I heard him bring up the philosophy of the generals. Those were in his notes. And I took them down as a young coach.”

The dynamic relationship between the two Coach Bowdens was an appealing addition for our tv show: father and son, formal rival coaches, traveling the world together, meeting heroes of the past, telling stories. The chemistry on and off camera between the two was just delightful- a lifetime of mutual respect, inside jokes, professional competition, filial honor, and fatherly pride. They were peers and one-time rivals, but never at the expense of the deep love of a father and son. It made for a humorous and respectful repartee that was completely singular.

It also revealed the priorities of the two men who wanted to spend time together in the field. Coach Bowden continually emphasized, “I am just grateful I get to be with Tommy, telling the stories of the World War II generation.”

Boyhood Dreams

Coach and I had a morning tradition on set. He started each day giving thanks to God. I responded by handing him a cigar. He was always enthusiastic. He would thank me sincerely with a “Yeah buddy, I sure appreciate that,” and then place the stick in his pocket. Some time later, I would see him with the unlit cigar between his teeth or held loosely in his mouth. Coach did not smoke, and he did not drink, but he enjoyed chewing on those cigars. He was a moderate man of self restraint, but with the wonder of a boy taking delight in the simple pleasures of life.

Coach Bowden never lost a childlike sense of wonder. Even in his late eighties, he had a fascination with the enthusiasms of his early life. He told me that he had always wanted to sit in a foxhole, command a tank, and experience flight in a Douglas C-47, like the boys who landed in Normandy on D-Day.

All three happened - the first in the Netherlands when Coach Bowden climbed into a Sherman Tank and took her for a spin where a battle in the Netherlands had been fought more than 70 years prior, and the second in Normandy, France, when he experienced the same C-47 simulator used to depict the paratrooper jumps in HBO’s Band of Brothers.

Coach Bowden in the Netherlands “commanding” a Sherman Tank.

The fulfillment of the third boyhood dream of Coach Bowden happened one day when we were filming off the beaten path, deep in the forest of Bastogne, Belgium. It was the location of one of the iconic moments in the Battle of the Bulge, featured in “Crossroads,” Episode 6 of Band of Brothers. Little had changed in the many years since the battle. We had to walk carefully through the snow in the forest because every dozen yards or so we would run into one of the original foxholes. But neither cold nor snow was going to stop the Coach. Into a foxhole he descended, wearing garnet and gold, while behind him were our “actors” who listened as we filmed him sharing stories from the battle. It was enthralling.

That day was freezing cold and we were on a tight deadline. I had just called wrap, and we were returning to the vehicles when a familiar face appeared walking through the forest maybe a hundred yards away. It was former NBC anchor and WWII author Tom Brokaw. He was making a bee-line for his car, but I caught him just in time. When I mentioned Coach to him and asked for three minutes on camera, he turned around and said, “Anything for Bobby Bowden.” With zero prep, the two men just started a conversation about “The Greatest Generation” which we captured on film. Typical to Coach, he made the conversation about his gratitude for the sacrifice of the veterans and the impact of Brokaw’s book on his own life. The two men, representing different politics and different spheres of influence, nonetheless shared a deep mutual respect for one another, and their dialogue in the cold that day made for a memorable scene which was ultimately incorporated into our pilot.

Tom Brokaw, author of “The Greatest Generation,” with Coach Bowden in Bastogne

That same trip, we found ourselves in a snow storm seeking shelter in a public building surrounded by Flemish speakers. But even there, thousands of miles away from his home, Coach was identified by swarms of fans including military stationed in Europe who wanted to thank him and shake his hand. He took time for each of them.

Showing deference to children and mentorship to the young football players he coached was a hallmark of the life of Coach. He invested in the lives of others. Hundreds of others. He cared about all of them, especially the fatherless boys. He once told me, “The last football team I coached, which has been a while, there might have been 60 percent of the boys who did not have a daddy, and they need a male figure in the home disciplining them.”

The Grateful Man

The Coach was a man of deep gratitude. He loved his country, loved his family, and loved his God. He was constantly expressing appreciation for all three. But traveling to Europe to film a television show gave him a fresh perspective on gratitude. At a time when Americans appeared so embattled over their identity as a nation, the Europeans he met filming a show on WWII were effusive in their appreciation and gratitude. Coach often remarked that the Europeans seemed more grateful for America than Americans themselves.

One day we were filming Coach Bobby and Coach Tommy by the grave of General Patton in Luxembourg when we were approached by an elderly man. He was a local who, it turned out, had been brought on staff with General Patton and was continuing to receive a U.S. pension. There were tears in his eyes as he spoke of his gratitude to America and the reason why he often returns to the American cemetery.

That spirit of gratitude was palpable in Normandy, France, home of the D-Day landing beaches. In the Normandy town of St. Mere Eglise, Coach interviewed the mayor of the famous town featured in The Longest Day. The two men established a rapport which culminated in the mayor sharing with Coach an emotional message about his love for America “because American soldiers gave their lives for me.”

The next day, the mayor of another small French town agreed to clear his city streets for the day to allow us to film “the liberation parade they never had” for a group of veterans traveling with Coach Bowden and our team. It was unforgettable. The children of the liberated dressed in the clothing of their grandparents’ era. It was such a happy moment defined by the gratitude of Coach Bowden and our many new friends in France.

When we were off mic and driving between filming locations, I enjoyed very special one-on-one times with Coach. We had memorable and candid conversations on subjects of mutual interest including his love for the music of the 1940s (the principle music on his playlist), his pride in each of his children in their individuality, the ups and downs of having a reputation for giving players second chances, his perspective on the general direction of the nation, the closing days of life for him at FSU, the leaders he admired, Auburn vs. Alabama, being a coach during the 1960s - it was a constant feast.

An Enduring Legacy

A favorite memory was spending Thanksgiving with Coach in a five hundred year old manor house once captured by the Nazis, but ultimately returned to the family whose ownership could be traced back to the 19th century. There we were, more than a dozen of us, sitting around the table, not far from the D-Day landing beaches where so many Americans died. Sharing the Thanksgiving table with us that day were WWII veterans, Netherlanders, French, and Americans. It was a beautiful moment of solidarity with the Coach who once again modeled for all of us a message of deep gratitude to God for His mercy on our nations and the world.

Thanksgiving in Normandy, France with Bobby Bowden and WWII veterans

Bobby Bowden was the best of the best of a rapidly disappearing generation - patriotic in the bones, purposeful and passionate, he possessed a core decency so often lost upon our increasingly merciless social media generation. His optimism was simply infectious. His childlike enthusiasm for life inspired men half his age to live with passion. His gratitude was singular. Those who knew him, loved him, worked with him, or played for him understood they were in the presence of that rare kind of leader who has found the balance between sincere humility and abiding self confidence. More than any other quality, he was a passionate man of faith. Great leaders will come and go, but the shoes of Bobby Bowden can never be filled.

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Doug Phillips is an attorney, author, director of Bobby Bowden Goes to War, and has directed and produced several television shows on World War II.