Have you ever wondered what life was like in Jacksonville half a century ago? It was a different era of history, culture and politics but there are often parallels between the kind of stories that made headlines then and today. As interesting as the differences may be, so are the similarities. These are some of the top stories from this week in 1961. The items were compiled from the Jacksonville Public Library’s periodical archives by Staff Writer Max Marbut.
• Criminal Court Judge William T. Harvey allowed Will Rogers Perry to withdraw his plea of guilty to the Feb. 11 theft of $4,380 from a safe at the Mayflower Hotel.
Harvey also set aside a 12-year prison term imposed on Perry for the crime and said he would set a date for a new trial.
Harvey’s ruling was based on an opinion rendered by the Florida Attorney General’s office. It interpreted state law requiring an officer who had arrested a person without a warrant to take the prisoner before a committing magistrate to make a formal complaint “without unnecessary delay.”
Harvey held there was such delay in Perry’s case.
Harvey’s order said that Perry was arrested at his home by City police about 9 a.m. June 14 and was questioned at the police station without interruption from about 10:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., during which time he steadfastly denied guilt.
Harvey said questioning resumed about 7 p.m. and continued until 9 p.m. when Perry was quoted by officers as admitting he had committed the burglary at the hotel.
Even so, Harvey said, detectives testified they still had difficulty getting Perry’s statement into writing and to get him to sign it. He said testimony showed that the confession was not signed until 2 a.m. June 15, some 17 hours after the arrest and without an appearance before a committing magistrate.
In an opinion dated Aug. 8, Assistant Attorney General Reeves Bowen in Tallahassee said the Florida courts had not defined what constituted an unnecessary delay under the state statute requiring a hearing for a person arrested without a warrant.
However, Bowen said, the Florida statute was practically the same as the federal rule of criminal procedure and the federal rule definitely had been interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in specific cases.
Bowen cited U.S. Supreme Court rulings which held there was unnecessary delay in a case in which the shortest period of detention involved was roughly seven hours – a much shorter period than in Perry’s case.
Harvey also based his ruling on another point, that the 12-year sentence took into consideration five other burglaries which the officers testified were admitted by Perry but on which no formal charges were filed.
Harvey quoted detective Lt. J.W. Greene testifying that about 9 a.m. June 15, both he and detective Sgt. H.W. Keller told Perry they would not publicize his statements about the other burglaries “but would file them away” and that he would not be prosecuted on any of them.
Yet, Harvey said, when Perry came before him July 10 to plead guilty to the Mayflower theft and be sentenced, the officers advised the judge that the defendant confessed to the Mayflower theft, and also to five or six other separate offenses.
Harvey said he had to concede “in absolute candor” that he would not have sentenced Perry to as long as 12 years in prison if he had not been advised of the other crimes, including a theft from the Morocco Shrine Temple.
Harvey’s order further noted that Perry was never taken before a committing magistrate nor given any kind of preliminary hearing.
Instead, he said, the County Solicitor’s Office filed a direct charge against Perry on June 16, a full two days after the arrest.
Through attorney Giles P. Lewis, Perry on July 26 filed a motion to withdraw his plea of guilty on the grounds that he entered the plea solely because Greene and Keeler promised he would get no more than five years in prison.
He also claimed the officers got him drunk on whiskey and induced him to confess the other burglaries.
• The Duval County Commission ignored strong opposition and voted to grant monopolies to two private companies to provide garbage collection services on the Northside.
During a disorderly meeting that at times turned into a shouting match between a commissioner and people in the audience, the commission voted to grant exclusive garbage franchises to Consolidated Sanitary Service Inc. and Sanitary Garbage Service.
Most of the opposition was focused on the franchise for Consolidated, which would have a monopoly in the Harbor View and Sherwood Forest areas.
One effect of Consolidated’s franchise would be to put E.E. Minor out of the garbage collection business in that area. Minor, who had applied for a non-exclusive franchise to operate in the area on a competitive basis, protested in vain the exclusive franchise for Consolidated.
At one point, Minor attempted to display some photographs he claimed showed improper dumping practices on the part of Consolidated.
Commissioner C. Ray Greene then pulled out some pictures he said depicted improper practices on Minor’s part. County Attorney Henry Blount ruled the procedure was out of order.
At several stages of the meeting, Greene and members of the audience “spoke in loud voices at the same time,” essentially attempting to “shout each other down.”
Greene insisted that the presiding officer, Julian Warren, rule that the audience was out of order in each instance, which was done.
“Maybe we better get a deputy sheriff to keep order up here,” Greene said, but no officer was called.
• A resident at the Jacksonville Zoo was causing quite a stir among visitors and zoo staff.
“Pete,” a sulphur-crested cockatoo, was whistling at women and saying words deemed inappropriate for a family environment.
Zoo Director N.P Baldwin said he could put up with the whistles, but the salty language would have to go. He said a major policy decision was in the works as to whether the foul-mouthed fowl would be gagged or given an extension course in speech therapy.
The bird’s background was also under investigation. Pete, who had once posed for a beer advertisement, had been donated to the zoo in 1944 by a sailor who had purchased him in the South Pacific.
Baldwin said he suspected the donor might have been the source of the bird’s salty language.
It was noted that Pete, who had blue eyes and showed off for girls, treated reporters with “Frank Sinatra-type contempt.”
He first refused to pose for pictures, but after urging from Stuart Blake, a zoo official, the bird hopped onto his perch and sat quietly. “For a change,” said Blake.
In answer to questions on the crisis in Berlin, the international effects of airplane hijackings and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Pete said to a reporter, “Get lost, Buster.”
When a photographer directed the bird to hold his head higher, Pete squawked a suggestion that was interpreted by Blake to mean the photographer should take a slow boat to Haiti – or someplace with a similar-sounding name.
One zoo official, E.M. Bozeman, was so concerned with Pete’s inappropriate vocabulary that he suggested that the cockatoo be instructed in the language of Outer Mongolia to prevent public recognition of his vocalizations.
• U.S. District Judge Harold K. Wood ordered a Jacksonville businessman held for a grand jury on a charge of causing a bomb scare on an airliner.
In a six-page opinion, Wood noted that Sam Silver, 36, admitted saying to a ticket agent at Imeson Airport, “I have a bomb in my briefcase.” Silver apparently was referring to a can of spray-type insect killer, Wood said.
However, the judge continued, he could see no humor in the remark.
“No doubt the statement was made in jest but the particular sense of humor attributable to this defendant does not lessen the seriousness of legal consequences.
“We cannot help but take judicial notice of similar situations elsewhere where individuals with a completely distorted sense of humor or pranksters with juvenile minds have caused delays, investigations and hardships, and induced fear, by such acts,” said Wood.
Silver, who ran a lumberyard and construction business, was accused of making the statement July 11. He was arrested by the FBI as he left an Eastern Airlines plane at Philadelphia International Airport. At a hearing before a U.S. commissioner Aug. 2, Silver was placed under $1,000 bond. Wood’s ruling meant he would face a federal grand jury in Jacksonville.
• Superintendent of Public Instruction Ish Brant said more teachers would have to be hired for the 1961-62 academic year due to the County Commission reducing the Duval County school board’s budget for the educational television station, Channel 7.
Gregory Heimer, educational TV coordinator, said television instruction in elementary schools would be limited to five lessons in Spanish each week at the beginner and intermediate levels.
Eliminated were TV instruction in art, science and social studies at the elementary-school level and science at the 9th-grade level. Remaining programs were 7th-grade mathematics, 8th-grade history, 10th-grade English and 11th-grade American history.
Two secondary schools, Oceanway and the new Arlington Junior High School, had been scheduled for in-school television instruction, but had to be eliminated because of a lack of funds, Heimer said.
Television sets for classrooms were not purchased with tax funds, but were bought by parent-teacher associations or dads’ clubs or were donated by local businesses.
Director of Instruction Charlie Council said it would cost $20,000 for the school year to employ four teachers to take up the slack created by the elimination of televised instruction in science alone.
He compared that figure to the $14,000 school budget cut for educational television.
Heimer said “a major adverse effect” of the budget reduction might be that principals, teachers and parents could lose faith in educational television.