Have you ever wondered 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 1959 and today. As interesting as the similarities may be, so are the differences. These are some of the top stories published in the Florida Times-Union 50 years ago this week. The items were compiled from the Jacksonville Public Library’s periodical archives by Staff Writer Max Marbut.
This editorial cartoon originally was published in the New York Herald Tribune and also appeared in the Times-Union Feb. 25, 1959.
• The new six-classroom Ponte Vedra Beach-Palm Valley Elementary School was dedicated. A plaque in recognition of Eunice Odom Semmes of 2979 St. Johns Ave., who donated the 40 acres of land on State Road 210 on which the school was built, was unveiled at the ceremony. The dedicatory address was delivered by State Sen. Verle Pope of St. Augustine. The Rev. Alexander Juhan, rector of Christ Church of Ponte Vedra Beach, gave the invocation and the Rev. W.R. Nelson, pastor of the Palm Valley Baptist Church, gave the benediction.
• Plans for building a teen recreation center near the Gator Bowl were bogged down in 20 feet of muck underneath the proposed construction site. The Jacksonville Youth Advisory Council had held a groundbreaking ceremony in November and set Jan. 1 as the date construction would begin. Engineer Thomas Evans had become suspicious of the site and ordered test borings which revealed the site was underlaid with 20 feet of muck in spots. As a result, the entire foundation had to be redesigned to provide for pilings, which would cost an additional $25,000, a cost far beyond the resources of the council. When it was suggested a local firm might donate the pilings and other construction materials, YAC chair H.M. Searcy appointed a committee to draft an advertising program for a campaign to seek a benefactor.
• An apparent “glaring defect” in the Florida gambling law was brought to light when Criminal Court Judge William Harvey threw out a bookmaking charge against a local bartender. Harvey ruled that William Brush, who had been charged with taking bets on baseball games, had won immunity from prosecution by testifying about his gambling transactions in a civil suit he filed to recover $20 he had lost to an undercover agent for the State Beverage Department. Brush, who worked at the St. Johns Bar on Julia Street, was one of a number of people who had been arrested in a gambling raid. His arrest set in motion a series of events that began as what appeared to be an amusing suit filed by Brush in Small Claims Court to recover the $20 he lost to the agent. There were no smiles among prosecutors when they checked the law and determined that the Legislature in 1951 enacted a statute providing that a person suing to recover money lost in illegal gambling became immune to prosecution based on facts in the case if he testified to his loss. Apparently the Legislature meant the law to permit a person to recover his losses from crooked gamblers and use the money for family needs. The law also left a loophole for a gambler to sue a winning patron, recover his loss, and at the same time escape prosecution for a crime for which he had already been arrested. Harvey upheld the contention of Brush’s attorneys, Goldstein & Goldstein, that Brush had won immunity from prosecution in Criminal Court by testifying in the Civil Court. County Solicitor Lacy Mahon Jr. said he still had hopes of prosecuting Brush on another charge of making book on dog races. That case was set for disposition on March 9.
• Real estate developer Langdon Lockwood was elected chair of the recently-organized Arlington Council of the Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce. He used the occasion to discuss the possibility of Arlington being annexed by the City of Jacksonville. Jack Gardner, who was elected to serve on the council’s board of directors, spoke in favor of annexation. He said the area had only two county police cars in the day and one at night even though the population of Arlington was more than 50,000. “This is ridiculous for a section that, by itself, has a population greater than St. Augustine, Palatka or Starke,” added Gardner. Lockwood was against annexation and stated, “The City of Jacksonville doesn’t have a quarter, but the Duval County commissioners have plenty of money and that’s where we should get our police protection. Once Jacksonville gets Arlington, we’ll be dead. We’ll have no streets, no services or anything. The City can’t take care of what it has now.” Lockwood’s opinion was echoed by another developer, William Cesery, who suggested support for one big services system to cover both the City and the county. “This method has been tried in other metropolitan areas and it has worked,” he said.
• The City Council Laws and Rules Committee discussed for an hour a proposal to require all cats in the city to be inoculated against rabies. Eletha Shaaber, the person who asked the committee to enact the ordinance, stated that such a law would have a twofold effect of protecting humans from contact with rabid cats and also help decrease the population of stray felines. That drew a reported “howl” from Mabel Craft, corresponding secretary of the Jacksonville Humane Society, who contended that if such an ordinance were enacted it would be impossible to enforce. She said it had been the experience of the Humane Society that it took hours to catch one stray cat and “with the simply tremendous cat population” in the city it would be impossible to even make a dent in it. Dr. E.R. Smith, the City Health Officer, agreed with Craft. He also pointed out that in 1958, 1,100 people in the city were scratched or bitten by dogs, as opposed to about 100 who were similarly injured by cats even though the cat population was larger.
• Federal, state and county officials destroyed the biggest moonshine still found in Duval County in more than a year. The items included a 350-gallon copper pot still and 11 55-gallon barrel fermenters. The operation was set up on a point of land jutting into San Carlos Creek northeast of the intersection of Heckscher Drive and New Berlin Road. Six people were arrested while they were unloading a boat filled with untaxed liquor.