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 1962-63. The items were compiled from the Jacksonville Public Library's periodical archives by Staff Writer Max Marbut.
• Voters in four of Jacksonville's suburbs rejected annexation, while voters who lived in the city limits invited the suburbs to join the municipality by a margin of 3-1.
The closest to becoming a part of Jacksonville was Zone 1 (west of the city limits), which missed by 177 votes. The Arlington zone rejected the proposal by 821 votes; northwest by 1,159 votes; and Southside by 1,162 votes.
The total vote in the four suburban zones was 15,936 against the proposal and 11,927 in favor of annexation. The city vote was 17,874 in favor of annexation and 5,310 against.
The total vote in the 72 city precincts and the 39 county precincts involved in the ballot was 50,335 out of 111,313 registered voters, a 45 percent turnout.
At stake in the referendum was the addition of 139,900 new Jacksonville residents and 66.8 square miles of new city limits.
"I feel very good about it. It was a vote of confidence for the County Commission. I'd rather not reveal details at this time, but we (the commission) have a plan in mind to present to the legislative delegation by which we could expand urban services to our constituents," said County Commissioner Fletcher Morgan.
County Budget Commissioner Joseph Kennelly said it was incumbent on county government to assume greater responsibilities in providing urban services to the suburban areas.
• Edward J. DeBartolo, president of Edward J. DeBartolo Companies based in Youngstown, Ohio, announced that his company was planning a $4 million shopping center development along Normandy Boulevard at Lenox Avenue.
He said the new center would have "the newest concepts in suburban shopping facilities."
The company had already designed, built and leased 69 shopping centers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan and Toronto, Canada.
"The increased growth in the population of the Jacksonville area and Duval County in the past 10 years is indicative of the need for more spacious, modern, comfortable shopping facilities, which the center will provide," DeBartolo said.
The mall-type center was proposed for a 37-acre site which at the time was the location of the Normandy Outdoor Theatre.
• W.C. Beaufort, the newly-installed president of the Jacksonville Area Chamber of Commerce, said public education in Duval County was "in a crisis" because of unrealistic financing.
He announced the formation of a special chamber committee, chaired by retiring President Harry Kincaid, to seek a solution to the education challenge on a priority basis.
"There is no greater problem facing metropolitan Jacksonville than our educational crisis and it is a definite crisis," said Beaufort.
He said Duval County's school system was the 15th largest in the nation and ranked 67th out of 67 counties in Florida in per-pupil expenditure for education. Beaufort said in 1962, the State Department of Education reported that just under half of all regular state teachers who did not have college degrees were teaching in Duval County and the county had the highest classroom load per teacher in Florida.
"As parents, our greatest obligation to our children is to unlock the imagination they have stored in their own minds so they might have insight into the outside world," Beaufort said.
• The Board of County Commissioners took under advisement a request from the Garden Club of Jacksonville to remove advertising benches at bus stops and other places along roads in unincorporated areas of the county.
"These advertising people are going out in your county and littering up the place. It's getting to be a menace all over the state," said R.M. Fortson, the club's civic and roadside chairman.
Fortson specifically asked the board to cancel any agreement the county might have with the advertisers such as, she said, the City had with advertisers.
County Attorney Henry Blount said the county had no agreements with advertisers. He said the board's policy had been to allow each commissioner to decide whether to allow such advertising in his area – and then only with the consent of property owners near the proposed location of a bench.
• The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers approved an application by the Jacksonville Expressway Authority to construct a high-level fixed bridge across the St. Johns River at Commodore's Point.
Army engineers said that the height of the bridge, 10 feet less than that of the Mathews Bridge, would accommodate virtually all vessel traffic which had used the Jacksonville harbor in the past or would use the harbor in the future.
A previous application by the authority for approval of a similar span across the river at 20th Street was rejected in 1960 by the Department of the Army because of its adverse effect on navigation.
• In a courtroom in Ocala, Duval County Judge of the Criminal Court of Record T.A. Boyer was found innocent in a directed verdict on a charge of violating the Migratory Bird Act.
Boyer had been accused of state and federal violations involving the killing of a bird Dec. 8 in Marion County.
State Attorney E.G. Musleh asked the Marion County Circuit Court to dismiss the charge.
Judge Lewis O. Myers agreed. He said there could be no proof the bird was shot out of season because the federal laws governing such hunting, which the state followed, had not been published as required.