The Way We Were: Margaret Day Julian & Hazel Harby Donahoo
Margaret Day Julian has pleasant memories of running down McGirts Boulevard to play with her cousins – eleven of them living on the same block! She and her brothers, along with cousin Hazel Harby Donahoo and her siblings, were fortunate to have 21 first cousins and 55 relatives within a five-mile radius in old Ortega. The memories of Julian and Donahoo aren’t just personal accounts of growing up on the river crabbing, bicycling and water skiing but are an integral part of Jacksonville history.
Arthur Benjamin and Hazel Brown Chitty married in 1913 and built the prairie-style house at 2953 Riverside Ave. in 1918 and had two sons and four daughters. The Chittys were founding members of Riverside Baptist Church, where all the girls were married, and Arthur Chitty was the founder of Chitty and Company on Dennis Street, the first wholesale grocer in Florida. After Arthur Chitty sold his business in the 1960s, he and family member Nathan Brown migrated to McGirts Boulevard to be near the rest of the family, where they lived in what old Ortegans know as The Barker’s Dock House. The family has had six addresses on McGirts Boulevard and three generations living in some of the same houses.
The oldest of the 21 cousins, Donahoo was often called upon to babysit the younger cousins for 25 cents an hour and she pointed out “that wasn’t per child!”
“It was the cocktail era,” Julian said about the entertaining during post-war times. “Everyone was very sociable and involved in the community. My father, Dr. Sam Day and our uncle, Dr. Jack Terry, went into practice together. They were general surgeons, and their offices were in the Medical Arts Building in 5 Points where the SunRay Theater is now.”
Donahoo and Julian both attended Ortega Elementary School and Lakeshore and Donahoo was everything one could be at Robert E. Lee High School.
“It was ridiculous! I was president of or volunteered for everything!” she said.
Donahoo was president of Little Women, in Y-Teens, mascot of Hi-Y, and dated (later married) the captain of the football team, Tom Donahoo. She said it’s in her DNA to excel and work. She taught school and was “tied to the Cummer” after being inspired to create Cummer by Candlelight upon seeing Franz Hal’s painting in Amsterdam when touring Europe with her mother.
“Mother and I were close friends. We served as docents at the Cummer for 18 years. It was fabulous training. I felt like I got a PhD in art,” she said. Later, she worked at The Added Touch and Mrs. Howard Interior Design as a decorator. She is in the Junior League, has been a devoted member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church for 70 years and uses her knowledge to “encompass her love of community.”
Julian, after attending Ortega Elementary, Lakeshore and Bartram, where her interests were music and drama, attended Stephens College to major in piano before graduating from University of Tennessee (UT) with a degree in speech pathology. Unlike her other cousins who stayed close to home, this free spirit hitchhiked to San Francisco for the Summer of Love. When she married, Julian didn’t tell her parents until later. She lived in Montana and was introduced to different thoughts and philosophies out west which have carried over into her present life. She refers to herself as “a flower child turned career woman.”
Julian returned to Jacksonville with her son, Edward Indigo Julian, and worked for thirty years in Duval and Nassau County schools as an itinerant speech pathologist. As a plant enthusiast – thanks to an inspiring botany course at UT – Julian is organizing the First Annual Ortega Camellia Festival, set for Jan. 27 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Ortega Church Fellowship Hall, which will include garden tours, artists on site, a bloom exhibit and art exhibit.
“So many of the young people who buy old Ortega homes don’t know or understand the legacy plants in their yards and tear them out. The festival will be a chance to educate the public and help preserve the historic plants,” she said.
Julian, whose favorite quotes include “Bloom where you are planted” and “Live simply so that you may simply live,” worked with the flower arranging committee at Riverside Presbyterian Church and is a lifelong member of the Sierra Club, Audubon Society and Delta Kappa Gamma. She loves music, particularly The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Although opera is her least favorite, she has great admiration for Rene Fleming and supports the Friday Musicale and Prelude Music.
The cousins, who live within two blocks of each other with relatives scattered all over Ortega, became best friends when their mothers died in 2010. As alike as they are different, the two share cherished affection for those who came before them, a zealous dedication to the betterment of their community and a keen sense of humor.
According to them both, “We might have inherited a little Bohemian streak from Grandmother Hazel Chitty.”
By Peggy Harrell Jennings
Resident Community News
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