Council extends drinking hours, youths to apologize for vandalizing Jewish Center
Have you ever wondered what life was like in Jacksonville half a century ago? It may have been 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 the week of Jan. 25-31, 1960. The items were compiled from the Jacksonville Public Library’s periodical archives by Staff Writer Max Marbut.
• At its Monday meeting the Jacksonville City Council Committee on Laws & Rules considered a controversial proposed ordinance to extend bar hours.
Clyde C. Cannon, council president and chair of the committee, made a motion at the meeting to refer the bill for consideration by the council as a whole on Tuesday rather than recommend that it be approved or killed. He said that by referring the bill, all nine council members could hear people’s views and decide how to vote instead of the decision being made by the committee.
Under the proposed ordinance, bar closing hours would be extended from midnight to 2 a.m. The change was requested, Cannon said, by local hotels and the Tourist and Convention Bureau. The board of directors of the Downtown Council and the board of directors of the Jacksonville Restaurant Association had endorsed the legislation.
The proposed change would ban sales from 2 a.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. Monday and from 2-6 a.m. all other days.
At the meeting of the full council, Harvey Mabry, attorney for the groups backing the bill, said member businesses paid 80 percent of the property taxes and were entitled to relief. He also said conventions were bypassing Jacksonville because it had become known as a “blue law” town.
According to Mabry Jacksonville was the only Florida city of comparable size with a midnight curfew. He said Miami bars stayed open until 5 a.m. and Tampa bars until 2 a.m. Closing the city bars at midnight forced patrons out into the county and to the bars at the beaches and bootleggers thrived off the midnight closing hour, he added.
The Jacksonville Ministerial Alliance voted to express its disapproval of the proposed change. The group listed reasons on which it based its opposition including: the later closing of the bars would lower the spiritual and moral level of the city, a longer period of drinking would increase public drunkenness and drunken driving, a lawless element would be attracted from surrounding areas, extending the closing hours would make law enforcement more difficult and increase the expense to taxpayers as more police and equipment would be needed, the welfare load of the City and County would be increased as someone would have to support the families of workers who frequented bars until 2 a.m. and crime would be encouraged as those who would be unable to hold jobs because of their late drinking hours would turn to theft and robbing.
After hearing public comment the Council approved the ordinance with an amendment to require the bars to close at 1 a.m. instead of the originally proposed 2 a.m.
Mayor-Commissioner Haydon Burns signed the ordinance into law and said he considered the amendment a reasonable compromise.
“I think the closing at the stroke of midnight Dec. 31 pointed up more vividly than anything the need for some sort of adjustment,” he said.
• A bid of $230,000 for the old Duval County Courthouse on Market Street between Adams and Forsyth streets was accepted by the County Commission.
Francis P. Conroy of the law firm of Marks, Gray, Conroy and Gibbs made the high bid among four received in the second attempt by the commission in a year to sell the old building. The appraised price was $250,000.
Conroy said after the bid was accepted it was planned to demolish the 58-year-old building and use the land for a parking lot and to modernize the annex added in 1915 for use as an office building.
The commission turned over the details of closing the sale to County Attorney J. Henry Blount. According to the bid call the successful bidder had 30 days to put the bid price in cash. Blount said, however, that the entire deal would take about 60 days to complete. One of the reasons was that due notice had to be given to Justice of the Peace Dorcas B. Drake and Constable J.R. Carmichael, who had recently leased space in the old building from the commission.
• Juvenile Court Judge Marion W. Gooding ordered three teenaged boys to apologize to the rabbi of Jacksonville Jewish Center for painting swastikas on the building Jan. 6.
Lou Safer, center president, said the congregation did not want restitution for the vandalism, even though such restitution had been ordered by Gooding. That prompted the judge to order a complete list of expenses be provided for the cost to the city, county and state so that restitution could be made for the costs of the investigation into the incident.
Gooding also ordered the youths, all students at Andrew Jackson High School, to visit Rabbi Sanders A. Tofield, in the company of their parents, to apologize for their act.
• Atlantic Beach police issued a warning for motorists to beware of driving along the beach, particularly north of Atlantic Boulevard, while the tide was coming in.
Four cars were submerged the previous weekend making the vehicles complete losses, police reported. Also, a four-wheel drive wrecker on the beach attempting to recover other vehicles was submerged after a wave broke across the hood and drowned the engine.
Police said the majority of cars which had been submerged and damaged were from Duval County.
Police Chief Jack Russell said cars on the beach north of the Seventh Street or Atlantic Boulevard ramps when the tide started coming in might easily be trapped. He also said that in a number of instances the occupants of trapped vehicles had to leave their cars and make it to the seawall where they watched the incoming water submerge their vehicles.
• An application for a change of venue in the scheduled forgery trial of Elizabeth Lopez Sams was taken under consideration by Criminal Court Judge William T. Harvey. He indicated he would deny an alternate application by defense attorney Walter Arnold to continue the trial indefinitely because of newspaper, radio and television publicity surrounding Sams’ alleged embezzlement of $182,000 from the Jax Police Credit Union.
Arnold based his application for change of venue on 55 exhibits – news stories and editorials reporting the case in detail. The application claimed Sams’ partial trial, that the state wields undue influence, that the defendant had become odious in the eyes of other citizens because of the publicity, that editorials were inflammatory and that a jury would be prejudiced because of publicity.
Duval County Solicitor Lacy Mahon Jr., in an answer to the application, countered with affidavits from 10 residents of the county who swore that accounts of the investigation would not influence them in a decision should they be selected as jurors.
Mahon denied the public had been aroused or inflamed to such a degree that a fair and impartial trial would be impossible.
Arnold said that about 800 policemen had been affected by the shortage of funds from the credit union.
“Each policeman has relatives and friends. They wouldn’t be on the police department unless they could deliver votes and each relative and friend is prejudiced,” countered Arnold.
Arnold also asked Harvey to intercede with news media to “accept their responsibilities to the public” and leave the case alone for several months.
“If the papers lay off we can have the trail here where it is convenient,” he said.
Sams, who was present in court with an attendant, was scheduled for trial Feb. 1 in Harvey’s court.
• The City Pardon Board granted pardons to two inmates at the City prison farm.
One pardon was for a 43-year-old man sentenced in Municipal Court on Jan. 19 to serve 30 days for disorderly conduct, drunk. His brother said the inmate suffered heart trouble and feared he might lose his job with a local shipyard if not released soon.
The other pardon granted was for a 43-year-old man sentenced on Jan. 18 to pay fines totaling $125 or serve a total of 40 days for driving while intoxicated and carrying a concealed weapon, a knife. A friend said the inmate, a steelworker, needed to get back to work to support his wife and four children. The pardon was conditioned on no objection from any party involved in a traffic accident with the prisoner.