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Author Bill Kaczor during signing event at Barnes & Noble store in Pensacola, Fla.

UPDATES

That's me at my first book signing on June 13, 2026, at Barnes & Noble, in Pensacola, Florida.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

“In the Land of the He-Coon, Blue Angels and Saint Bobby” is a new book about people, places and events that have shaped the modern Florida Panhandle

GULF BREEZE, Florida (April 28, 2026) – Why was Bob Sikes called the He-Coon? What is it like to fly a Blue Angels jet? How did Saint Bobby win his halo?A new book from Palmetto Press answers those and more questions about people, places and events that transformed the Florida Panhandle from a rural backwater into a player on the national and world stages. “In the Land of the He-Coon, Blue Angels and Saint Bobby: Reporting from the Florida Panhandle” was written by retired Associated Press correspondent Bill Kaczor. It is based on reporting by him and other journalists over the past half-century with some flashbacks to earlier times. The once overlooked Panhandle has doubled in that span to 1.7 million residents, more than 11 states and the District of Columbia.

The He-Coon, Congressman Bob Sikes, was instrumental in expanding or creating eight military bases that are pillars of the Panhandle’s economy. They include Pensacola Naval Air Station, which hosts the Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron that thrills millions every year, and Eglin Air Force Base, the nation’s largest. The Panhandle also has made its mark in sports, no one more so than “Saint Bobby” Bowden, who coached Florida State University, a former women’s college, to two of its three national football championships.The 607 pages feature an array of colorful, famous and infamous personalities such as Nobel laureate Paul Dirac, boxing champ Roy Jones Jr., sports Hall of Famers Don Sutton, Emmitt Smith and Derrick Brooks, talk show host Joe Scarborough and serial killer Ted Bundy. Then there’s the Red Barron and his pal, the Banty Rooster; the Blue Wahoos and Blue Ghost; as well as the original Black Panther, the Black Widow and America’s Black attorney general. Others are Reubin the Good, Florida’s Atticus Finch, Trader Jon, Captain Supreme, Pensacola’s Renaissance Man, the “father” of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and Geronimo. You’ll also meet Bubba, Buck, Bo, two Boos (a golfer and a murderer), Boss Hog and Bozo. There are visits to the Miracle Strip, Redneck Riviera, Gay Riviera, Florida’s Big Bend and the Hamptons of the South as well as the Emerald, Nature and Forgotten coasts. Historic events include the 2000 presidential election recount, multiple hurricanes, a devastating oil spill, anti-abortion bombings and murders plus other sensational crimes, wars and battles of the past and present. There also are archaeological discoveries, racial protests and a Panhandle duo’s legislative sneak attack that gave the state a $13 billion windfall.

The Air Force sent Kaczor from Chicago to Eglin in 1970. He has a bachelor’s degree from Eastern Illinois University and a master’s from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Kaczor (Kay-zor) began reporting from the Panhandle with the Playground (now Northwest Florida) Daily News and then the Pensacola News Journal and Gannett News Service’s Tallahassee bureau. He joined AP at Tallahassee in 1980 and became the news service’s Pensacola correspondent in 1984. He retired in 2013 and lives with wife Judy in Gulf Breeze. “In the Land of the He-Coon, Blue Angels and Saint Bobby” is available in hardcover, paperback and e-book versions.

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

6 p.m. (CDT) Monday, Oct. 26, 2026, Historical Society of Bay County, Public Library, 898 W. 11th St., Panama City, Fla. (FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC)

11:30-1 p.m. (CST) Wednesday, Kiwanis Club meeting, Trigo's, 131 Harrison, Ave., Panama City, Fla.

BOOK SELLING AND SIGNING

2-4 p.m. (CST) Sunday, Nov. 8, 2026, Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival, Seville Square, Pensacola, Fla.

THE BOOK IS IN THE NEWS

Click here for a link to a Pensacola News Journal story about "In the Land of the He-Coon, Blue Angels and Saint Bobby."

A panhandle reporter has seen a lot over 43 years. He's ready to share

ADDITIONAL READING

Ball, Braden Lee (1997) "Around West Florida in 80 Years," Pensacola: University of West Florida Foundation Inc.

Bense, Judith A. (1999) “Archaeology of Colonial Pensacola,” Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.

Bense, Judith A. (2026) “Early Spanish Florida: Unearthing the History of America’s Oldest Colony,” Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.

Bense, Judith A. (1982) “Presidio Santa Maria de Galve: A Struggle for Survival in Colonial Spanish Pensacola,” Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.

Bense, Judith A. (2022) “Presidios of Spanish West Florida,” Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.

Bense, Judith A. (2007) “Unearthing Pensacola,” Pensacola, Florida: University of West Florida Foundation.

Blanchard, Dallas, and Prewitt, Terry J. (1993) “Religious Violence and Abortion: The Gideon Project,” Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.

Bowden, Bobby, with Schlabach, Mark (2010) “Called to Coach: Reflections on Life, Faith and Football,” New York: Howard Books, A Division of Simon & Shuster, Inc.

Bowden, Jesse Earle (1979, 2002) “Always the Rivers Flow: Deliberately a Memoir,” Tallahassee, Florida: Father & Son Publishing Inc.

Brown, Scott (2013) “Baseball in Pensacola: America’s Pastime & the City of Five Flags,” Charleston, South Carolina, The History Press.

Carswell, E.W. (1975) “Possum Cookbook: America’s amazing marsupials and dozens of ways to cook them,” Chipley, Florida: Carswell Foundation Press.

Carswell, E.W. (1981) “He Sold No Shine Before Its Time,” Bonifay, Florida: Taylor Publications.

Carswell, E.W. (1982) “Commotion in the Magnolia Tree,” Bonifay, Florida: Taylor Publications.

Carswell, E.W. (1982) “Tales of Grandpa and Cousin Fitzhugh,” Bonifay, Florida: Taylor Publications.

Coker, William, and Watson, Thomas D. (1986) “Indian Traders of the Southeastern Borderlands: Panton, Leslie & Company and John Forbes & Company, 1783-1847,” Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.

Coker, Wiliam, and Shofner, Jerrell H. (1991) “Florida: From the Beginning to 1992,” Houston, Texas: Pioneer Publications in 1991.

Coram, Robert (2007) “American Patriot: The Life and Wars of Colonel Bud Day,” New York: Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company.

Day, George E. (1991) “Return With Honor,” Mesa, Arizona: Champlin Museum Press.

Dyckman, Martin A. (2008) “A Most Disorderly Court: Scandal and Reform in the Florida Judiciary,” Gainesville, Tallahassee, Tampa, Boca Raton, Pensacola, Orlando, Miami, Jacksonville, Fort Myers, Sarasota: University Press of Florida.

Ellis, Steve, and Vilona, Bill (2006) “Pure Gold: Bobby Bowden, An Inside Look,” Champaign, Illinois: Sports Publishing LLC.

Farmelo, Graham (2009) “The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom,” New York: Basic Books.

Freeman, Mike (2009) “Bowden: How Bobby Bowden Forged a Football Dynasty,” New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Harvey, Gordon E. (2023) "The Politics of Trust: Reubin Askew and Florida in the 1970s," Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press.

Hubbard, Col. Edward L. (1994) “Escape from the Box: The Wonder of Human Potential,” West Chester, Pennsylvania: Praxis International, Inc.

Hutto, Earl (1996) “Captain Supreme Goes to Washington: A Memoire,” Pensacola, Florida: Enhutt Publishers.

Jahoda, Gloria (1967) “The Other Florida,” New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Jahoda, Gloria (1975) “The Trail of Tears: The Story of the American Indian Removals, 1813-1855,” New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Jahoda, Gloria (1976) “Florida, a Bicentennial History,” New York: American Association of State and Local History and W.W. Norton & Co.

Kyle, James H., and Eidson, John Robert (1990) “The Guts to Try,” New York: Orion Books.

Larsen, Richard W. (1980) “Bundy, The Deliberate Stranger,” Hoboken, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Macos, Adam (2015) “Devotion: An epic story of heroism, friendship, and sacrifice,” New York: Ballentine Books.

Matthews, H.K., with Butler, J. Michael (2007) “Victory After the Fall,” Montgomery, Louisville: New South Books.

McGehee, Sharon, and Anderson, Chris (1991) “Bodies of Evidence: The True Story of Judias Buenoano, Florida’s Serial Murderess,” Secaucus, New Jersey: Lyle Stuart.

McGovern, James (1985) “Black Eagle,” Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.

McGrotha, Bill (1987) “Seminoles! The First Forty Years,” Tallahassee, Florida: Tallahassee Democrat.

Michaud, Stephan G., and Aynesworth, Hugh (1984) “The Only Living Witness: A True Account of Homicidal Insanity,” New York, New York: Signet.

Michaud, Stephan G., and Aynesworth, Hugh (2000) “Ted Bundy: Conversations with a Killer,” Irving, Texas: Authorlink Press.

Myers, Craig R. (2006) “War of the Words: The True but Strange Story of the Gulf Breeze UFO,” Bloomington, Indiana. Xlibris.

Nelson, Polly (1994) “Defending the Devil: My Story as Ted Bundy’s Last Lawyer,” New York City: William Morrow & Company.

Miller, Gene (1975) “Invitation to a Lynching,” New York, New York: Doubleday.

Morris, Allen (1995, 2011) “FLORIDA PLACE NAMES: ALACHUA TO ZOLFO SPRINGS,” Sarasota, Florida: Pineapple Press Inc.

Parks, Virginia, editor (1998) “Santa Maria de Galve: A Story of Survival,” Pensacola, Florida: Pensacola Historical Society.

Pearce, George F. (2000) “Pensacola During the Civil War: A Thorn in the Side of the Confederacy” Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.

Pisano, Louis R., and Smith, Michael A. (2016) “Jaws2: The Making of a Hollywood Sequel,” Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media.

Priestly, Herbert Ingram (2010) “The Luna Papers,” Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.

Risen, James, and Thomas, Judy L. (1998) “Wrath of Angels: The American Abortion War,” New York, New York: Basic Books.

Rule, Ann (1980) “The Stranger Beside Me,” New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Scarborough, Joe (2005) “Rome Wasn’t Burnt in a Day: the real deal on how politicians, bureaucrats and other Washington barbarians are bankrupting America,” New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Scarborough, Joe, (2009) “The Last Best Hope: restoring conservatism and America’s promise,” New York, New York: Crown Forum.

Sherlock, Vivian (1982) “The Fever Man,” Tallahassee, Florida: Medallion Press.

Sikes, Bob (1984) “The He-Coon: The Bob Sikes Story,” Pensacola Florida: Perdido Bay Press.

Skinner, Woodward B. (1987) “The Apache Rock Crumbles: the captivity of Geronimo’s people,” Pensacola, Florida: Skinner Publications.

Sullivan, Kevin (2016) “The Trail of Ted Bundy: Digging Up the Untold Stories,” Denver, Colorado: WildBlue Press.

Sullivan, Kevin (2017) “The Bundy Secrets: Hidden Files on America’s Worst Serial Killer,” Denver, Colorado: WildBlue Press.

Sullivan, Kevin (2019) “Ted Bundy’s Murderous Mysteries,” Denver, Colorado: WildBlue Press.

Thornton, Capt. John W., and Thornton, John W. Jr. (1981) “Believed to be Alive,” Middlebury, Vermont: Paul S. Eriksson.

Toobin, Jeffrey (2001) “Too Close to Call: The Thirty-Six-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election,” New York City: Random House.

Trest, Warren A. (2000) “Air Commando One: Heinie Aderholt and America’s secret air wars,” Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.

Tschinkel, Walter (2006) “The Fire Ants,” Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Young, Josh (2014) “And Give Up Showbiz? How Fred Levin Beat Big Tobacco, Avoided Two Murder Prosecutions, Became a Chief of Ghana, Earned Boxing Manager of the Year & Transformed American Law,” Dallas: BenBella Books.

Walters, Ed, and Walters, Frances (1990) “The Gulf Breeze Sightings: The Most Astounding Multiple Sightings of UFOs in U.S. History,” New York City: William Morrow & Company.

Ziewitz, Kathryn, and Wiaz, June (2004) “Green Empire: The St. Joe Company and the Remaking of Florida’s Panhandle,” Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida.

LINKS TO PICTURES ON FLICKR

BLUE ANGELS PHOTOS:

Blue Angels 2024 | Flickr

Blue Angels 2022 | Flickr

Blue Angels 2021 | Flickr

Blue Angels 2019 | Flickr

Blue Angels 2017 | Flickr

Blue Angels 2016 | Flickr

NATIONAL NAVAL AVIATION MUSEUM PHOTOS

National Naval Aviation Museum | Flickr

TRADER JON'S PHOTOS

Click here for a link to pictures of the Trader Jon's exhibit at the Pensacola Museum of History