Duval Medical Center would soon have a revolutionary new X-ray machine capable of taking pictures at the rate of six per second, thanks to a donation from the Duval County Chapter of the March of Dimes.
At the organization’s annual meeting in the Roosevelt Hotel, Donald Bolling, chapter chair, presented a check for $12,000 to cover the cost of the device to Dr. Herbert Toch, medical center chief radiologist.
The device was the Schoenander rapid serial film changer.
Toch said the body’s soft tissues would not show up on ordinary X-ray film.
Injecting dyes into the bloodstream didn’t help much with standard X-ray equipment because the entire amount of blood in the human body went through the heart in one minute.
The rapid serial film changer, combined with dye injections, could provide information never before obtainable without resorting to surgery, Toch said.
The new accessory would be used to evaluate adults, but would be particularly useful to diagnose congenital diseases in children.
“Many diseases and abnormalities, once diagnosed, are surgically correctable. If left undiagnosed or incompletely diagnosed, the child may very likely die or be seriously handicapped for the remainder of his life. It is considered a basic truth in medicine that good treatment must be based on good diagnosis,” said Toch.
In making his annual report, Bolling urged the chapter to embark on a program of public education.
He said a recent national survey showed only 7 percent of Americans were aware the March of Dimes, which led the fight against polio, also was concerned with birth defects.
“Birth defects are the No. 1 crippler in this country and possibly the No. 1 killer if stillbirths are taken into account,” said Bolling.
• City Council called for return of a share of federal income tax to be used for municipal purposes.
In a resolution introduced by members R.B. Burroughs Jr. and Cecil Lowe, council lent its support to a proposal of the National League of Cities and Florida League of Municipalities.
Burroughs said the concept would be to have a percentage of federal income tax paid by residents returned to the city through the state to be used as local officials felt necessary.
He said that would replace the new system of federal aid programs, as they currently were organized.
• The city’s independent auditing firm reported that more than $1 billion in transactions during 1965 were conducted in “exemplary” fashion by City Treasurer H.S. Albury.
The City Commission hired Shorstein & Shorstein, certified public accountants, to review all municipal financial records.
The treasurer’s office handled all income to the city, including bond funds and taxes as well as short-term investment of idle funds, the interest earned on those investments and reinvestment of the interest.
“Our examination has uncovered no discrepancies in the handling of city money by your office. The diligence with which you and your staff handled more than $1 billion was exemplary,” the audit report stated.
In addition to reviewing city depositories for funds, investments, securities, revenue collections and tax roll receivables, auditors on Feb. 9 conducted an unannounced cash count.
• A 70-year-old man was sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder over a $2,000 debt.
Roger Rolison Sr. was sentenced by Circuit Judge Charles Luckie after he denied a motion for a new trial.
A jury on March 29 made the life sentence mandatory when, after deliberating for one hour, it found Rolison guilty of first-degree murder but recommended mercy.
Had he been found guilty without the recommendation and barring the granting of a new trial, the automatic penalty would have been death in Florida’s electric chair.
Assistant State Attorney Nathan Schevitz brought Rolison to trial for the shooting death of Wilford Weaver, 51, who lived at 664 E. 11th St.
Rolison, of 654 E. 14th St., who worked as a well digger, claimed Weaver owed him $2,000 and refused to pay the debt.
In his defense, Rolison claimed he was temporarily insane Sept. 3 when he gunned down the victim.
Testimony brought out that Weaver and several other men were talking in the office of an iron works business that Weaver operated at 2074 Evergreen Ave.
At about noon, Rolison walked in with a pistol in each hand and started blazing away at Weaver with both guns without saying a word.
Witnesses said the other men scattered and weren’t harmed. Weaver was hit in the stomach and liver.
To refute Rolison’s claim of temporary insanity, Schevitz called to the witness stand two court-appointed psychiatrists.
They testified, in their opinion, the defendant was legally sane at the time of the shooting and knew the difference between right and wrong.
In his final argument, Schevitz did not ask for the death penalty, but left that to the jury’s judgment.
• Addressing convention delegates at the George Washington Hotel, a congressman from Louisiana said America wasn’t creeping — it was running — toward socialism.
“We are dissipating our wealth forming a new system of government in America and helping to form and finance socialistic governments all over the world,” said U.S. Rep. Otto Passman to delegates at the 137th annual Grand Communication of the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge, F. and A.M. of Florida.
A member of the House Appropriations Committee and chair of its Foreign Operations Subcommittee, Passman criticized President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program.
“If all the plans for the Great Society are put into effect, the people’s reward for their reluctance to open their eyes and see the faults will be a complacent society with free enterprise shackled with government control, if not government partnership — with incentives deadened and initiative paralyzed — and with the government controlling the individual’s life from the cradle to the grave,” he said.
Passman, a Democrat, said he was prepared to suffer “any political penalty” for the privilege of “exposing the hypocrisy” of the Great Society.
• A musician was seriously wounded when he bent to kiss his wife and a .22-caliber Derringer dropped to the floor.
The gun discharged as it hit the floor, shooting Carl Moody, 24, in the chest.
Duval County Patrol Officer Hafford Williams said Moody’s wife told him her husband usually took the gun to work.
Moody was preparing to leave home at 4519 Gilbert St. about 10:30 p.m. when the accident occurred.