Senior Residents

All the latest news and stories about our neighborhood’s senior residents.

The Way We Were: Henry Darwin Rogers

The Way We Were: Henry Darwin Rogers

Dashing. Daring. Dapper and Debonair. Ian Fleming of James Bond fame would have found new inspiration for novels based on the incredible adventures of Henry Rogers, a man who has tangoed, samba-ed and passo dobled his way around the world as easily as he has navigated the stage of First Coast Nutcracker for 41 years. […]

The Way We Were: Margarette Jeanne Hardage Chambliss

The Way We Were: Margarette Jeanne Hardage Chambliss

A conversation with Jeanne Hardage Chambliss is an amusing, witty journey filled with interesting stories of growing up in Riverside, her extensive world travels, fascinating people she knows and has known, her 40-plus years of teaching experience, and what it takes to live and die.  Chambliss’s family helped shape her into the memorable person she […]

The Way We Were: Michael Trower Carlucci

The Way We Were: Michael Trower Carlucci

The San Marco area was a completely different world 60 years ago, filled with the imaginings of an atomic age side-by-side with hand-mixed cherry cokes, gender-divided dances, and freedom from parental oversight.  The Bolles School was still a military school, Jacksonville International Airport was called Imeson, and kindergarteners still pedaled around on Schwinn bicycles unaccompanied, […]

The Way We Were: Neill Wade McArthur, Jr.

The Way We Were: Neill Wade McArthur, Jr.

Neill McArthur has done some serious traveling in his lifetime. He mentioned 20 countries he has visited and that didn’t include visiting the Russian Federation twice, where he had problems with his passport and his hotel reservations were cancelled because the King of Saudi Arabia reserved the entire hotel and displaced the other hotel guests.  […]

The Way We Were: Katherine Monahan

The Way We Were: Katherine Monahan

Once upon a time, 79 years ago to be exact, a little two-year-old named Katherine and her three older sisters found themselves living on the east side of the St. Johns River, in the Granada neighborhood just south of San Marco. Their father, J. Reedy Brown, worked for National Distillers, maker of some of the […]

The Way We Were: Bill and Julie Mason

The Way We Were: Bill and Julie Mason

Juliette “Julie” Baldwin Mason is a seventh-generation native Floridian from a pioneering American family whose ancestors arrived at Plymouth Colony in 1621 on the Fortune, which landed two weeks following the Mayflower. Members of her family fought in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, as well as World War I and II.   One of three […]

The Way We Were: Anita Thompson

The Way We Were: Anita Thompson

A local newspaper once dubbed Anita Thompson as “the Catholic pharmacist.” That’s a very apt descriptor of Thompson’s passion, involvements and accomplishments in the 63 years she has lived in Jacksonville.  Born in Stuart, Florida, in 1932, her mother, brother Frank and she moved to Key West after World War II started, where, from 1939 […]

The Way We Were: Mary Jane Blanchard

The Way We Were: Mary Jane Blanchard

Mary Jane Blanchard has many memories of growing up on Felch Avenue and in San Marco; hanging out with two close girlfriends; teachers who inspired her to become a teacher; and classmates and friends, some of whom help her today, because she is now homebound.             Mary Jane’s mother, Dorothy Louise Burrell, moved to Jacksonville […]