Recalling Book Burnings at Jacksonville University

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The 1970 Jacksonville University yearbook, the Riparian, was a collector’s item before the year was out. That fraternity members burned the book helped. So did the national news of JU’s president’s threatening to withhold the editor’s diploma. Half a century later, JU grads treasure it as an almost sacred object.

When Artis Gilmore Led a Whole City to the NCAA Championship

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In 1970, Jacksonville University marched toward the NCAA championships, David v. Goliath, and enraptured its city in the process. Sports Illustrated called JU a “transformed junior college” and Jax the urban heart of the Okefenokee Swamp. The first page of the yearbook caught the front of one shoe, nothing more: Artis Gilmore stood 7’2″, but some added six inches for his afro.

The Volstead, the Knight Building, and Ghosts of the Fire of 1901

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The W.A. Knight Building stands on the old homesite of Edward Cleaveland, “the man who burned down the town,” whose business negligence started the Great Fire of 1901. When the building was new, it was illegal to buy or sell alcohol. It now houses the Volstead, a bar named in irony for the Prohibition Act.

Celebrating Ken McCulough

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He retired a year ago, but Covid kept him from celebrating until now. So now I’m reposting this story in celebration of Ken McCulough, a theater legend in Jax.

Ken McCulough directed the first play, Cabaret, on the main stage at FSCJ’s Wilson Center for the Arts. He directed the first production, Our Country’s Good, in the studio theater. Throughout his career, he’s won awards and accolades in Memphis, Seattle, and Lincoln, Nebraska. For his farewell production, students who began with Ken’s career return and hope “to make him proud one last time!”

Walking the Fishweir Creek Loop / Finding the Bridge Where They Planted the Dynamite

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Twice they dynamited the railroad bridge on Fishweir Creek, but it barely slowed down the Palmetto Limited. Alligators and otters inhabit the creek. So did Vivian’s gun. How many people ever have walked the whole creek loop through the city?

Making an Old Church — with Its Many Past Lives — Home

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Having renovated this old church and made her home here, Jennifer Raines says she’ll never live anywhere else. When Mike Bennett lived here in 1970, it was a “Jesus Freak” hippy commune. A young Vietnam vet named Larry Colton, missing for more than 40 years now, lived here too. A Haitian church destroyed by arson was the last congregation to call this old church home. What lives this building has lived!

Walking on Water (via the New Pedestrian Bridge over the St. Johns River)

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The new pedestrian bridge over the St. Johns River makes the city that much more walkable. It takes us between the apartments where I lived in Five Points and the apartments where my wife-to-be lived in San Marco, through Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road,” and we loop back over other bridges and above the hulking old railroad bridge. 

Project: Cold Case — “Because One Unsolved Murder Is Too Many”

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Of all 50 states, Florida has the sixth highest number of unsolved homicides: between 1965 and 2021, nearly 20,000. Yet the motto of Project: Cold Case is “Because One Unsolved Murder Is Too Many.” The advocacy platform grew from Cliff Backmann’s unsolved 2009 murder. Now Project: Cold Case represents families from Florida to Alaska, though every family’s grief is the center of the world.

Remembering the “Forgotten Roadie,” Chuck Flowers

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Amidst all the Lynyrd Skynyrd tragedies, he’s not often spoken of. Even the headlines that announced his death misidentified him as a former backup guitarist. He’s been called the “forgotten roadie.” Ironically, if he’d been on that plane that crashed in 1977, he might still be alive.

Easter After Easter in the Garden / Motor Court

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I’m just barely too late. It’s after midnight. But I’ll still post my Easter story. It’s the story of an old motor court on Main Street, patterned in crime, dated Easter after Easter, Thanksgiving and then Thanksgiving. It’s the story of the Relax Inn, once the Garden Court, and before that the Main Street Motor Court. Its echoes are uncanny.