Harry H. Roddenberry
Harry Roddenberry, 91, says with a baffled smile that most of his life happened by accident, but things always turned out fine. The odd twists started at his birth. His mother named him after his father, Harry Hill Roddenberry only to have her husband admit how much he disliked his middle name. “So I have […]
Local WWII veteran guest of France at D-Day 70th anniversary
Shirley Hall was certain when she answered the phone on May 29 that it was a prank call, so she did what anyone would. She hung up. When it rang again, Shirley listened but did not believe what she heard. “I said ‘…are you kidding me? Is this a hoax?’ But it wasn’t a prank […]
Barbara Jean Coleman Richardson
Barbara Richardson cherishes her two grown children, two grandsons and close friends more deeply because of a tragedy she experienced early in life. Her carefree childhood growing up in Ortega with mother Pearl Johnson Coleman of Jacksonville and father Leonard Coleman abruptly changed when Pearl died at age 24. Barbara was just six and her […]
Landon Lionettes
Nancy Champion Rush, 79, was a beaming fresh-faced youth in her Landon Lionette uniform posing for photos during the early 1950s when she attended Landon High School. Now, as she carefully turns pages in the Landonian yearbooks, the intervening years vanish and it seems like yesterday. She reminisces about the Landon Lionette Drill Team and […]
Frieda and Leonard Saraga
Frieda Saraga of San Marco was born in Gary, Indiana and came to Jacksonville at age seven. Her parents, Rose and Max Hochman, and grandparents, Sophie and Nathan Hochman, opened a grocery store on the west side in the Woodstock area. While attending Annie Morris Elementary, John Gorrie Junior High and Robert E. Lee High […]
Bobby Arnold
Back in 1930, women of refinement, like Eleanor Maltby Horne, gave birth to their babies in the little “laying-in” hospital on Riverside Avenue. It was there that Barbara Lawrence Horne (better known as Mrs. William E. “Bobby” Arnold) was born. One of four daughters born to Chalmers Duke Horne and his wife Eleanor, Bobby jokes […]
BILL SCHMIDT
While widely known in Jacksonville as the quintessential hometown boy who grew up surrounded by lifelong friends and family in Venetia and Ortega, Bill Schmidt was born in Ocala, Florida where his father was serving as a WWII Army Air Corps Flight Instructor. It was when the war ended that Christine and Gert Schmidt brought […]
ARNOLD CORR
“Hi, I’m Arnold. Will you marry me?” With those words to a young red-headed girl with green eyes, Arnold Corr changed his life. “Her name was Sue Brennan and it took me about two hours to get an answer from her, but she said yes,” recalled the 88-year-old San Marco resident who lost his beloved […]
