The Way We Were: Betty and Tesch Brundick
By Victoria Register-Freeman Betty Blount Brundick likes to point at the letter B cast in concrete above the front door of her home. Her eyes twinkle when she says,” Tesch married me for the B.” The couple met at Lakeshore Junior High School in seventh grade. Betty remembers, “My class opened Lakeshore. For part […]
The Way We Were: Joyce Thomas Jones — Part I
By Laura Jane Pittman Once upon a time, there was an area of Jacksonville called Southside. Now, dear reader, this is not the same Southside we think of today. It was located in the area of South Main Street and what was then Miami Road — in the vicinity of today’s bb’s and Reddi […]
The Way We Were: Malcolm and Kathryn Fortson
By Victoria Register-Freeman Malcolm Fortson took the Biblical command “Love thy neighbor,” literally. Growing up next door to Kathryn Register, he would often see her playing records on the family porch. Her sister, Beverly — known to everyone as Wookie — would occasionally repeat the well-known Biblical phrase. As Kathryn recalls, “He was a year […]
The Way We Were: Eleanor Ashby
By Victoria Register-Freeman The seed that blossomed into Eleanor Johnson Ashby’s love for history just might have been planted one day at the Jacksonville Terminal, a site know today as the Prime Osborne Convention Center. Wearing a yellow handkerchief linen dress sewn by her mother Imogene, a six year old Eleanor handed a bouquet […]
The Way We Were: Betty Sterling
By Laura Jane Pittman When Betty Sterling and her husband Stu were looking to move from Memphis, TN in 1972 after Stu retired from being a Captain in the Navy, they had a wealth of familiar choices. The couple had lived in several U.S. mainland states, as well as more exotic locales such […]
The Way We Were: Alice Coughlin
By Laura Jane
Pittman
It
says a lot when someone who has experienced the metropolitan worlds of Houston
and New York City is happy to call Jacksonville home. Alice Coughlin wouldn’t dream
of living anywhere else. Even though she smilingly admits to crying for her
first two years here while she adjusted, she considers herself a true Floridian
and “absolutely loves Jacksonville.”
A
former (and occasionally current) fashion model who grew up in Houston,
Coughlin and her husband Warren moved to Jacksonville from New York City in
1958, after he purchased the “little tiny franchise” first known as Florida
Wired Music, later becoming Florida Sound Engineering Company.
The
popularity of Muzak soared during the next few decades, so the Coughlin’s
franchise didn’t stay little for long. The company eventually bought other
franchises and installed sound systems throughout the state and in such local
buildings as Independent Life, Southern Bell, and the original Gator
Bowl.
Meanwhile,
the couple was busy raising children Mark and Cyndi – who were 12 and eight at
the time of the move.
“We
first rented a house in St. Nicholas on Palmer Terrace, and the children could
walk to school at Assumption,” recalled Coughlin. “Mark would get up early in
the morning and walk down to the river to go fishing. I told him I was NOT
cleaning fish, so when he cleaned what he caught, I would cook them for
breakfast.”
From
time to time, Mark would watch Jacksonville artist John McIver painting on the
banks of the St. Johns River. And although the family loved the convenience of
St. Nicholas – there was a medical clinic close by on one corner of Atlantic,
an A&P (now the site of Curry Thomas Hardware) on the other, and a
drugstore at the site of Mudville Grille – some bulldozers in the San Jose
Forest area caught Coughlin’s eye.
“I
developed the bug for designing and building houses when we were in Houston. So
I asked around and found out they were building a new neighborhood. We went
tromping around in boots and work clothes to pick out our lot,” she smiled. “We
built on Saragossa and were the third house in the neighborhood.”
The
family sat down to dinner together every night and shared events from the day,
a tradition that both parents and children treasured. They also frequented
downtown and loved to attend fashion shows at the hotels. Daughter Cyndi would
ride the bus downtown with friends to go shopping and to the movies.
Coughlin
remembers when Epping Forest was mostly woods, and she recalls how much easier
traveling to the other side of the river became once the Buckman Bridge was
built in the early 1970s.
During
the 1970s, Coughlin served on the symphony board and also volunteered with the
American Cancer Society, whose office used to be at the Koger Center on Beach
Boulevard. She still works with the organization today.
After
their stint in San Jose Forest, the family built a house in Deerwood. On a
November 2, 1975 visit to Jacksonville, one of President Gerald R. Ford’s
stops, as memorialized in his daily diary, was the Coughlin house. Cyndi and
her husband Kent Schmidt were on hand to meet him.
Coughlin
grew tired of big houses, and the couple lived for a time at 6000 On The River
condominiums in the San Jose neighborhood, before biting the bullet once again
and building a house in Mandarin where they lived for 12 years. Nine years ago,
they built another home on Sorrento Road in order to be within walking distance
of the San Marco community.
The
greatest tragedy in Coughlin’s life was the loss of son Mark at age 48 to
cancer. Shortly after his death, she and Warren sold their company. Another sad
event occurred four years ago with Warren’s death.
Though
she misses Warren every day, Coughlin, now 84, enjoys a full life with friends
and family, including six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren (the
youngest one was born in March).
“Warren
and I had 62 amazing years together, and we were able to travel all over the
world,” she said. “We were very fortunate, and I am very blessed!”
The Way We Were: Doug Milne
Doug
Milne wears many hats — husband, father, grandfather, attorney, civic leader,
mentor, friend and local historian just to name a few.
Moving
from the Northwest in 1946 at the age of three with parents Doug and Betty and
infant sister Mary, Milne’s wide-angle view of Jacksonville’s civic character
began on the patrol boy drill field of Lackawanna Park.
“There
were not as many cars when I grew up. Sections of town were more isolated from
one another. My friends and I did not visit other sections of Jacksonville very
often. Indeed, we called Avondale Our Town.
I
didn’t realize that Greater Jacksonville was a collection of Our Towns, each
with its own unique history and culture. My patrol boy drill days introduced me
to kids from Springfield, Ribault, Wesconnett, and Arlington, and they helped
me understand that different parts of Jacksonville are like various creeks that
drain into the St. Johns. They have unique names but they all flow into the
same river.
Two
other events helped me broaden my civic outlook. I was selected as a
representative to a YMCA world youth conference when I was a 17-years-old
junior at Lee HS. This was a 10-day residential experience in Hilversom,
Holland. I lived with youth representatives from 48 different countries. It was
quite the experience as was Florida Boys State that same year.”
The
river itself was a playground for Milne and his friends, David Nussbaum,
Michael Hughes and Michael Fisher (who ran away from home every day and lived
with Doug’s family until dinner.)
“J.F.
Bryan had a ski boat that he shared. We water-skied behind it. We fished, too,
and that is a sport I still love. When we weren’t on the river, we sometimes
were in the streets. Pine Street, where I lived, was always full of activities.
One
of the activities was cork ball, a game created by Chuck Rogers, director of city
parks, and father of legendary Lee football coach, Corky Rogers. The game
required that you wrap a cork in tape and position two pennies on it. You hit
it with a broom handle and ran. A good player could make that cork dance.
Later,
during high school at Lee, I participated in Hi-Y and in more structured
athletics, baseball primarily. I was also on a Beaches baseball team that was
written up in a local newspaper as “The Boys of Summer” even though we weren’t
all that good.”
But
play was only one part of the era’s equation.
“When
I was 14, I got a Times Union paper route which consisted of morning delivery
for 138 papers. My father informed me that the route was more about the
importance of work than it was about the money. It did teach me about work. I
am forever thankful that on frigid or rainy morning, my mother would get up at
4:00 a.m. and drive me around the route. Collections were always on Friday.
The
money I did make went farther then. Hamburgers at the Avondale drugstore were
25 cents and a shake was 25 also. With two cents tax, that meant lunch was 52
cents total. At one point, too, my mom would take carloads of my friends and me
to the Edgewood movie theater where we could watch two features, a cartoon and
a newsreel, eat popcorn and a hotdog and not spend an entire dollar. Some
things have changed.”
And
some things have not. Milne’s children Doug, Joey, Mary Susan and William grew
up in the same neighborhood where their father played champion cork ball. Milne
and his wife Nora, an adoption and foster care administrator, live two blocks
from the Pine Street house where his mother still lives. After spending time at
the University of the South, Sewanee and the University of Florida law school,
Milne returned to Avondale to nourish the deep struck roots of friends, family
and community.
