(Source of image: Florida Collection, Main Public Library, Jacksonville)

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These old wooden desktops must've taken a beating, with students scratching messages and pictures into them.  An African American teacher, Miss Eula M. Mote, taught these River City kids.  Her service took place two years before court orders finally achieved substantial desegregation in Duval County in 1971.  Although the children are now approaching fifty years old, their alma mater, Ramona Boulevard Elementary School, still stands in the Westside.  Its main building dates from 1952.

FUN FLASHBACKS -- What might these fifth graders have been discussing when their picture was snapped?  Possibly Neil Armstrong, who in 1969 became the first person to walk on the moon.  This was also the year of the Archie's "Sugar, Sugar," a surprise bubblegum hit among everyone from teenyboppers to hippies to grannies.  Other likely favorites among these children were "Build Me Up Buttercup" by the Foundations, "Everyday People" by Sly and the Family Stone, "Hair" by the Cowsills," "Dizzy" by Tommy Roe, and "Crimson & Clover" by Tommy James & the Shondells. 

You can bet that, in 1969, Ramona's kids flocked to Murray Hill's Normandy Theater for such flicks as "The Love Bug" and "Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang!"  First heard on TV that year was Shaggy's cry "Scooby Doo, Where Are You!" (Did you know that the name "Scooby Doo" came from Frank Sinatra's recording of "Strangers in the Night"?  And that the song was written by Charlie "Hoss" Singleton, a Jax native?)   Saturday mornings in 1969 also lit up with with the inaugural episodes of "H. R. Pufnstuf," "The Pink Panther," and "The Banana Splits." Many of the boys must've raced out to buy Hot Wheels after Mattel devised a Saturday morning program for the plaything.  It proved the first cartoon based on a current line of toys.  The FCC raised sand about this, however, and a new law finally prohibited this entrepreneurial practice.  (The law was repealed in 1983, thus starting an avalanche of toy tie-ins with animated series.)

"Broadway Joe" Namath may've been on the lips of some of the Ramona students.  Prior to the third Super Bowl, the pro quarterback ran his mouth and guaranteed an upset against the Baltimore Colts.  And indeed, the New York Jets stunned the nation with a victory, 16-7.  The cocky young Namath was chosen MVP in that game. 

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