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 this week in 1961. The items were compiled from the Jacksonville Public Library’s periodical archives by Staff Writer Max Marbut.
• A major overhaul of the City principal employee pension plan was recommended by a 23-member employee committee and a bill to enact the changes was put before the Duval County legislative delegation.
The bill would affect the 1937 Employees Pension Fund, which at the time covered about 2,700 City employees. The only other major municipal pension plan covered police officers and firefighters.
The committee’s recommendations called for employees to contribute 7.5 percent of their wages to the fund beginning Jan. 1, 1962, to be matched by the City.
That was an increase from the existing 6 percent contribution, also matched by the City.
Fund members at the time the proposal became effective would be entitled to retire after 20 years of service, regardless of age, on a pension of 50 percent of their average salary for the previous three years. They would receive 1 percent additional for each additional year of service up to a maximum of 60 percent.
Employees who joined the plan after the date the proposal became effective would be eligible for benefits after 20 years of service if they had reached their 55th birthday.
Their pension would be 40 percent for the first 20 years and 2 percent for each additional year up to a maximum of 60 percent.
At a public hearing before an overflow audience in City Council chambers, the delegation heard rumblings of discontent from City employees enrolled in the pension plan concerning the language of the proposed legislation.
Assistant City Solicitor Fred Simpson told the delegation that more than 2,000 plan members had voted in favor of all of the proposed changes.
That’s when Alma Armstrong, a member of the committee and secretary of the Civil Service Board, complained about the form of the ballot.
“It’s the only ballot I’ve ever seen where a man couldn’t vote no,” she said.
One man, who refused to identify himself to reporters, submitted a petition which he said bore the signatures of 1,106 fund members who wanted no changes in the pension plan.
The crowd gave an exceptionally hostile reception to George Baldwin, spokesman for the Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce, who reported that the organization supported all but one of the proposed changes.
“Kill him,” yelled one woman in the audience when Baldwin was identified.
Baldwin objected to a provision in the bill that would give a disability pension of 25 percent of his earnings to an employee with less than five years of service if he was injured off the job. Baldwin said the provision was “getting into the area of insurance.”
I.C. Alsobrook Sr. jumped to his feet to say the chamber had been “sniping at the pension plan for years.”
In the midst of heavy applause, Alsobrook said nobody would have to worry about off-the-job injuries if City employees were paid enough so they didn’t have to take outside employment.
• The fate of a proposed joint City-County port authority remained in question following a public hearing before the legislative delegation.
State Rep. Harry Westberry said he favored “some type” of combined authority, but State Rep. George Stallings said he thought free enterprise was the way to develop the port without government influence.
State Sen. Wayne Ripley and State Rep. John Mathews Jr. gave no indication of what they thought of the idea.
The Jacksonville City Commission and the Duval County Commission had asked the legislators to enact, at the session beginning in April, a bill that would create the Jacksonville-Duval County Port Authority.
The authority was designed to develop and regulate air and water traffic in the area. It would be composed of the five City commissioners, the five County commissioners and an 11th member appointed by the other members to vote only in the case of a tie.
The bill would give the authority power to issue bonds payable from its revenues and bonds payable by ad valorem taxation, subject to a referendum of the county’s property owners.
It would also empower the authority to establish an annual ad valorem tax not to exceed 1.5 mills to pay operating and administrative expenses and to cover construction costs.
The bill would also allow the City and County to convey property to the authority, including the municipal docks and airports and the County’s Blount Island, site of a proposed port facility “on a grand scale.”
Mayor Haydon Burns said the City “already had a going operation” in the municipal docks, but lacked the funds needed to expand operations. The County, on the other hand, had the broader taxing power and undeveloped property for new port facilities.
“Put the two together and you won’t find a Utopia but you’ll come nearer a resolution of this problem of port development,” he said.
“It’s a public function to make the St. Johns riverway accessible to free enterprise. The river has been here ever since Jacksonville has been here and if free enterprise could do the job, it would have been done long ago,” said Burns.
• Members of The Jacksonville Bar Association endorsed a proposed bill which would authorize the payment of a “reasonable compensation” to attorneys appointed by Criminal Court judges to represent indigents accused of serious crimes.
The bill was drafted by a special committee of the association headed by Harry Reinstine, who reported on its contents at the association’s luncheon at the George Washington Hotel.
The measure would permit the payment of a maximum fee of $250 to a court-appointed attorney to represent an indigent accused of a felony, then a maximum of $250 additional if the case was appealed to a higher court.
The payments would be made out of the County’s fine and forfeiture fund, Reinstine said.
• Dr. Jack Hand, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, was elected president of the Duval County Legal Aid Association at the group’s 30th annual meeting at the Seminole Hotel.
Association members heard William Avery, a Chicago attorney and former law partner of Adlai Stevenson, discuss legal aid for persons who could not afford to pay for it.
Avery said figures of the local association showed it had handled 1,300 cases per year for the previous two years, indicating the local legal aid staff was “doing a demanding job.”
“Maybe you should consider how helpful it would be to have a full-time lawyer in the office,” said Avery.
He also said Jacksonville lawyers probably had a proportionally higher rate of legal aid participation than lawyers in any other city in the nation.
“But perhaps they would prefer to give money to hire a full-time lawyer than give the time,” said Avery.
Contributions by Jacksonville attorneys were a means Avery suggested for financing a staff lawyer for the local legal aid association.
Another possible source, he said, would be to increase the dues for membership in The Jacksonville Bar Association, with the added money going to pay for the staff attorney.
• Sheriff Dale Carson reported that Duval County had only two major unsolved cases.
He listed them as the disappearance of Beverly Jean Cochran and the robbery and murder of T.J. Dunn.
Cochran vanished from her Riverside home March 3, 1960, and Carson said his department had followed up on more than 1,400 leads without coming up with any concrete evidence. He classified the case as one of his “most frustrating” cases he had ever seen.
Dunn was a superintendent at the County prison farm. Carson said many leads had been checked and lie detector tests had been administered to several persons.
Carson expressed the opinion that both cases would eventually be solved.