Ever wonder what stories made headlines in Jacksonville 50 years 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 the news in 1958 and today. As interesting as the similarities may be, so are the vast differences.
• Improvements prompted by having a new County Courthouse on Bay Street began on the waterfront properties nearby. The first building to receive a facelift would be the BayMar Building on the northwest corner of Bay and Market streets. The two-story building had been purchased by a syndicate of lawyers headed by A.M. Crabtree Jr. Improvements were scheduled to be completed by August when the ground floor would house a restaurant, barber shop and marine supply firm while attorney’s offices were on the second floor. The building has since been replaced by the Blackstone Building.
• At a meeting at the Roosevelt Hotel, the Florida Association of County Judges called for a change from the fee system to a straight salary. Duval County Judge McKenney J. Davis noted that the fee system was based on 1927 figures while offices had to run on 1958 costs.
• Sears would put a roof on the “average 24-foot by 36-foot bungalow” for $162. For $285, the company would install asbestos siding on the same home. The advertisement proclaimed “It won’t burn, rot or decay – it’s fireproof!”
• John Lanahan was elected president of United Cerebral Palsy of Jacksonville. C. Lamar Dean was first vice president, W. Clyde Miller second vice president, Gordon Spottswood, secretary and Robert T. Carlisle, treasurer. That year the local clinic treated 60 new patients for the disease and had 345 total patients.
• On April 24, 1958 the Florida Supreme Court threw out a suit charging the Jacksonville Bar with soliciting business in an unethical fashion. The court ordered Duval Circuit Judge Claude Ogilvie to dismiss the suit that charged that advertisement of a lawyers’ referral service established by the local attorneys violated the code of ethics against a lawyer drumming up business. The service was established to direct persons without legal counsel to 16 members of the Bar for advice and advertisements were placed in newspapers and the telephone directory advising the public the service was available. In an opinion by Justice T. Frank Hobson, the court said competition is the root of abuses in advertising and if individual attorneys were permitted to compete through advertising there would be abuses. It was also noted that lawyer referral services were available in more than 100 cities in America and the establishment of such services had been a program of the American Bar Association since 1946.
• Harold Colee, executive vice president of the Florida State Chamber of Commerce, addressed the Southside Businessmen’s Club and said, “I hate and despise the word ‘recession.’ That word has no place in Florida’s economy and Florida’s economy is nothing more or less than the people of Florida want to make it.” He also declared the State Chamber would be very active during the 1959 legislative session including using “all the influence at its command to help straighten out the ad valorem assessment mess, where it is too high in one area and too low in others.”
• Embry Coalson, an inspector with the State Board of Health’s Bureau of Narcotics was invited to speak at an assembly at Jacksonville University sponsored by Theta Gamma sorority. He said neither Florida nor Jacksonville had a teenage drug addiction problem. “Only 200 individual arrests of narcotic offenders were made in the state last year and few of them were here in Jacksonville,” said Coalson, who then added, “Basically, Florida is a clean state without much narcotic traffic. Practically all of the addicts are found in the Miami area.”]