Quick thinking and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation performed by a Hyde Park Eagle Scout probably saved the life of a 20-month-old girl who had stopped breathing after she fell and struck her head on the floor of the carport at her home.
Ann Haase of 2104 Tegner Drive said her 7-year-old son, Billy, and her daughter, Eilene, were playing in a wading pool in the carport while she was in the kitchen preparing lunch.
“All of a sudden Billy ran in the house and said the baby had fallen and struck her head. I ran to the carport and she was lying on the cement. When I picked her up, her eyes just rolled back in her head and she wasn’t breathing. I thought she was dead. I slapped her back like I had heard you should do but nothing happened. Then I panicked,” said Haase.
Her husband, William Haase, was away from home with the automobile and the telephone was out of order.
“I saw Scott Westervelt riding by on his bicycle and knew he was a Boy Scout. I screamed for him to help,” Haase said.
Westervelt, 15, said he dropped his bicycle in the front yard and ran to help. When Haase handed him her daughter, he placed the infant on the driveway and administered first aid.
“I began giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which I had learned in the Scouts a couple of years ago. She began breathing after about two minutes,” Westervelt said.
After the child started breathing, Westervelt took her to his home at 2130 Tegner Drive. His mother, Erien, drove her neighbor and her injured daughter to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where the child was treated and released.
As they left for the hospital, Haase remembered the ham she had left cooking on the stove and Westervelt ran back to the house in time to avert a second disaster.
Westervelt had been an Eagle Scout since he was 13 and was a member of Troop 130 at Hyde Park Baptist Church.
• U.S. District Judge Bryan Simpson denied a motion by black school patrons to speed up the rate of racial integration of the local public school system.
The motion, filed by attorneys for the NAACP, was argued before Simpson on March 27.
The attorneys asked that the grade-per-year integration plan ordered earlier by Simpson be stepped up and that during the school year beginning Sept. 1, 1964, grades one through six be racially mixed.
The motion also asked for immediate implementation of another provision of the school integration plan calling for the assignment of teachers, principals or other supervisory employees upon a nonracial basis. Simpson’s original school integration order held that portion of the plan in abeyance.
“In my view, the speeding-up process should not be undertaken prior to the opening of schools for the fall term of 1965,” Simpson said in his order denying the motion.
• William Stockton Jr., Republican candidate for Congress, from Florida’s Second District returned to Jacksonville from a campaign meeting in Washington, D.C.
Stockton, who was running against U.S. Rep. Charles E. Bennett in the November general election, met with party leaders and other candidates during a three-day session.
The purpose of the meeting was to discuss issues to be raised in the election and to instruct candidates in effective campaign techniques.
Among those participating in the meeting were presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and former Vice President Richard Nixon.
• According to the administrative assistant of Augusta, Ga.-based Southeastern Newspapers Corp., the newspaper of the future would be computerized.
Speaking to delegates at the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association Mechanical Conference, B.R. Carter said automation could one day allow subscribers to print their own newspapers at home using computers equipped with rolls of paper. He said that would eliminate the cost of printing and delivering a newspaper.
Southeastern owned the Augusta Chronicle and Herald and the Savannah News and Press. Total circulation of the four newspapers was about 150,000.
Computers had already become part of the operation on the publishing side, as every word in news stories and other editorial material plus classified advertising columns was set with the use of an IBM 1620 computer, Carter said.
“The main benefit so far has been a speedup in typesetting,” he said. “We have reduced typesetting time 40 to 60 percent. We’re saving money,”
• A big blast was recorded at the Southside Generating Station Downtown along the St. Johns River when the city Electric Department used 400 pounds of steam pressure to blow out lines that would be connected to a new 150,000-kilowatt turbine generator.
The project produced “tremendous noise and some ground vibration.” The purpose was to rid steam lines of any rust, mill scale or other debris that had accumulated in them during installation. The generator was expected to be put in service by Aug. 25.
The new boiler, steam line system and turbine generator cost about $15 million. The addition was financed from a $22 million bond issue sold to improve electric facilities.
• The Jacksonville City Council on a 5-3 vote rejected a bill that would have allowed serving of beer and wine with meals at the Jean Ribault Room, the restaurant in Sears, Roebuck & Co. along Bay Street.
The legislation, introduced June 28, would have amended an ordinance banning city licenses for beer and wine sales within 400 feet of the city’s waterfront parking lot to exempt the Sears restaurant from the prohibition.
Voting against the measure were council members R.B. Burroughs Jr., Barney F. Cobb, Elbert H. Hendricks, Robert R. Roberts and Lemuel Sharp.
Council members Clyde “Red” Cannon, W.O. Mattox Jr. and R. Lavern Reynolds voted in favor of the exception.
Council President Cecil F. Lowe was disqualified from voting because he was acting mayor in the absence from the city of Mayor Haydon Burns.
Burroughs later explained his vote by saying he was willing to do away with the 400-foot rule for all parties, but would not vote an exception for one business. He said he was opposed in general to granting exceptions on ordinances. Hendricks said he felt much the same way about the proposed legislation.
• Building permits issued during July for the unincorporated areas of Duval County covered construction with a listed value of $3,213,896.
That was a substantial increase over the June total of $2,348,923, which was the lowest monthly figure to date in 1964, said County Engineer John H. Crosby.
More permits were issued for single-family dwellings than for any other construction. The engineer’s office issued permits for 234 new homes with a value of $1,750,840. Permits were issued for 117 apartment units with an aggregate value of $473,000.
Crosby’s office also issued a permit covering $380,000 valuation for additional construction on the Kaiser-Gypsum Co. plant at Dames Point.
• The Duval County Budget Commission gave final approval to a $37,177,812 budget for public school operations for the fiscal year beginning Sept. 1. The budget was adopted by a unanimous vote and exactly as it was proposed when it was publicly advertised on Aug. 3.
Only one person attended the public hearing conducted by the commission to comment on the budget. He was Lex Hester of 4285 Baltic Ave., who read a typewritten statement in which he said he was commenting as an “interested citizen.”
Hester said the Duval County school system had three major failings. They were, he said, the lack of a progressive education climate in the county, a shortage of money and a lack of an effective means of correcting those conditions.