Denny Bowsher's 1966 Ford Mustang Convertible
You never forget your first love or your first car. Sometimes your first car is your first love.
Denny Bowsher bought his first car in 1968 while home on leave from the U.S. Air Force during his “one-year obligatory stint in an all-expense-paid tour of Southeast Asia.”
The Field High School graduate bought the 1966 Ford Mustang convertible, a red beauty with a white ragtop, and enjoyed it for barely a month before volunteering to return to duty in place of a buddy whose wife was pregnant.
Thousands of miles from his Mustang, Bowsher continued to make car payments. The staff sergeant worked as an electronic warfare repairman at Takhli Air Base in southern Thailand during the Vietnam War, and the hazardous pay duty helped him pay off the $1,800 purchase loan on the Mustang.
Bowsher loved the car so much that he carried a photo of it in his wallet.
His mother, Mildred, wrote a letter to him and assured him the car was getting “good exercise” back home by his sister Kathy and brother Terry.
Bowsher’s military tour ended in 1970.
“When I finally got home, the shifter handle was loose and the rear end had some problems — so it must have gotten plenty of ‘good exercise,’ ” he recalled.
Bowsher, 74, a Tallmadge resident and Goodyear Aerospace retiree, still owns the Mustang and belongs to the Mustang Club of America. His wife, Barbara, a retired Akron teacher, still owns her first car: a 1972 Cougar XR-7.
Incidentally, Bowsher has a bit role in the 2015 documentary “A Faster Horse,” about the Ford Mustang. A 10-second clip shows him working on a Soap Box Derby car as a teen. The filmmakers used Bowsher’s family footage to illustrate a scene about Mustang chief engineer Dave Pericak’s childhood.
The movie’s tagline is “Everyone has a Mustang story.”
Denny Bowsher certainly does.
(photo credit: Denny Bowsher)
