The Way We Were: Marsha and Ronnie Pollock
Marsha Leibo Pollock is a second-generation Jacksonville native, born at St. Vincent’s in Riverside to a retail family. She spent her toddler years in St. Nicholas, where her father had built one of the first houses in a subdivision off Beach Boulevard. When she was 4, Marsha’s family moved from there to Holly Lane in the Colonial Manor section of San Marco. That was her home for many years.
Marsha attended Southside Grammar School Number 7 before Landon High School.
“Everybody went to the neighborhood school then. It’s different now. The same kids I went to elementary school with, I went to high school with. It’s just the way Jacksonville was then,” she said.
Marsha grew up with one sibling, a younger brother named Meyer. They spent quite a bit of time together in their backyard pool.
“We had a lot of parties. Everybody was always over at our house,” she said.
Every weekend found Marsha at the San Marco Theater via the Colonial Manor bus. Birthdays were spent at The George Washington Hotel, with its music and dancing. Cruising to Lou Bono’s on Beach Boulevard was quite the fad.
“We used to play our football games at the Gator Bowl. It wasn’t like it is now,” she said.
No matter the event, a group would often be found hanging out at Marsha’s house afterwards.
Upon her 1960 graduation from Landon, Marsha went off to the University of Georgia (UGA).
“I didn’t want to stay home. I wanted to go away,” she said.
Fate must have been calling her, because that’s where she met Ronnie Pollock, who would become her husband.
“It was a blind date,” he said, that brought them together.
They wed in August 1962 at the Jacksonville Jewish Center, where Marsha had been bat mitvahed. The couple lived in Atlanta for 10 years before Ronnie received a job offer that would bring the family close to where the company’s main office was located, Jacksonville. That’s what brought Marsha back home in 1972, now with three children in tow: Joy, Stacy, and Lee. The children would be raised in San Jose Forest, and Marsha liked that they had their maternal grandparents close by.
“It was home for me, but I’d never lived here married. I had to make a new life here as a couple, so I got involved in my synagogue,” Marsha said.
For nearly a decade, Marsha worked as a preschool teacher at Solomon Schechter Day School, housed at the Jacksonville Jewish Center, while her children were students there, before they attended Wolfson and graduated from UGA, their parents’ alma mater.
After leaving the school, Marsha filled a variety of positions at Leibo’s, a men’s shop that her father had owned for 55 years. She was an officer, bookkeeper and cashier from 1984 until 1993. Leibo’s occupied various locations throughout the city, beginning at 105 West Bay Street downtown, then moving to Adams Street before ending up on Beach Boulevard.
Over the years, Marsha has volunteered, too. A lot. Within two years of beginning teaching, she had become president of the Sisterhood at the Center. By 2014, she was board president of River Garden Hebrew Home in the Mandarin area. In 2016, she was dubbed the first female president of the synagogue. The River Garden Auxiliary referred to her as a “volunteer extraordinaire.” That title is apt, considering that she has sat in the president’s seat of nine different boards.
Ronnie, a chemist, made a career in printing-ink sales and supplies for a company called CPNW Printing. His projects included Lay’s potato chip bags, several coffee companies’ containers, and some supermarket chains’ grocery bags.
“We made ink for packaging, not for ballpoint pens,” Ronnie said. “My job when I moved from Atlanta, Georgia, to Jacksonville, Florida, was to begin a research lab.”
The lab was located at University Boulevard and St. Augustine Road. He traveled around the country during the week, doing research, visiting clients and giving speeches. When he wasn’t traveling, Ronnie always managed to remain active.
“He’s a huge, huge tennis player. And he’s done River Runs,” Marsha said of her husband.
Ronnie would play matches at a few different racquet clubs. There was Baymeadows, where top players from around the country were brought in on center court, and Bigtree, which is now the Williams Family YMCA on San Jose Boulevard.
“I played for 48 years. Ninety percent of those 48 years, I played singles,” Ronnie said.
When he did play doubles, Ronnie would play with Wayne Sanderson as his partner. Together, they won a championship match at Bigtree. Ronnie then moved on to Hendricks, where he and his buddy played singles on the soft court, which he called the “best in Jacksonville.” He had still been on the court up until three years ago when a fall led to knee replacement surgery.
Since Ronnie’s business retirement in 2021, he’s been up to “a number of things.” For one, he flies recreational airplanes out of The Radio Control Club of Jacksonville. He likes cars, too. He has a 1959 classic Corvette convertible, red with a white cove, which he’s used to chauffeur children for Dreams Come True’s annual Dreamer parade and for special events at Beauclerc Elementary School. He attends weekly men’s luncheons. And once in a while, he still likes to hit a tennis ball against a wall simply because he misses it so badly.
Marsha, too, is still up to a number of things of her own and is an active volunteer within the Jewish community.
“I never have a minute,” she said.
For 42 years, the Pollocks called the same house in San Jose Forest “home.” But with the kids grown and gone, Ronnie and Marsha moved to The Palazzo at St. Johns on Goodby’s Creek, only two miles away. They had been one of the first two couples to move into the Tuscan-inspired condominium community. They enjoy walking the neighborhood together daily.
They frequent local eateries, too, but Marsha still misses what was.
“All the things I grew up on are gone,” she said.
Patti’s Restaurant had been her favorite, where she ate for every special occasion. Biser’s and Sandy’s Steer Room were two others. Ronnie holds fond memories of Sundays at the in-laws’ house. Marsha’s father would buy several pounds of corned beef and dozens of rolls from the local delicatessen. The extended Leibo family and many friends would gather near the pool in the backyard and eat sandwiches.
“On weekends, it was all about our family,” Marsha said.
The Pollocks’ own family has now grown to include five grandchildren. August 19 marked the Pollocks’ 61st wedding anniversary.
By Mary Wanser
Resident Community News
(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading... 
