Arnold and Newlin: AHN trip to Europe 1961

Arnie travels to Europe for business in September 1961. From Florida he flies to New York City on September 1, buys a few postcards, mails a card to Joel, and takes a photo of the TWA Flight Center under construction.

postcard of downtown Manhattan, New York City, circa 1961

postcard of Fifth Avenue, midtown Manhattan, New York City, circa 1961

postcard of midtown Manhattan with the Empire State Building, New York City, circa 1961

Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center under construction at Idlewild International Airport
(now the John F. Kennedy International Airport), September 1, 1961

postcard of midtown Manhattan with the RCA Building and Chrysler and Empire State Buildings, New York City, circa 1961

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Arnold and Newlin: June 1961 WEN

Bill works in a flower bed of snapdragons and stocks on the side of his property facing North Jackson Street, Glendale. 

Bill tending garden in his side yard near the intersection of N. Jackson and E. Mountain Streets

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Arnold and Newlin: Spring and Easter 1961

Some photographs from Florida in the spring of 1961. The first set are from 3448 NW 11th Avenue, Arnie and Newlin's new house in Gainesville; the second set from Nursie Ashmore's house in Crawfordville at Easter.

In the first five Gainesville pictures, the family is in the living room. The next two are in the front yard of the house, where one can see the car port. Car ports were perhaps more common in Florida at that time. The numerous pine trees provided shade in the summer, keeping the air conditioning bill lower. Later they were a nuisance as they frequently lost branches in any wind or storm.

Andrew, six months old

Andrew, Allan (back of head) and Joel, spring 1961

Newlin, Andrew, Joel, and Allan, Gainesville, spring 1961

Joel, Newlin, Andrew, and Allan, spring 1961

Newlin, Andrew, Joel, and Allan, spring 1961

Joel with Ruffy

Joel, Andrew and Allan with their dog Ruffy, spring 1961

Allan, Andrew, Newlin, and Joel Nevis, spring 1961

It looks like Newlin is wearing a birthday hat in the photo above, but I can think of no one's birthday in the spring, so perhaps this picture is from Mother's Day, May 14.

Easter (April 2) was spent at Newlin's mother's house in Crawfordville. She had a large grape trellis for her scuppernong grapes in the back. Allan and Joel did not like the grapes' pungent flavor but they did throw the fruit at each other in play. Newlin's brother Ludlow and his family (wife Clarisse, son Randan and daughter Jerri) joined them.

Allan, Joel, Arnie, and Andrew, Crawfordville, Easter 1961

Allan and Joel, Easter 1951

Andrew, Newlin, Joel, Arnie, and Allan, Easter 1961

Clarisse, Randan, Ludlow, and Jerri Ashmore, Easter 1961

Allan, Easter 1961

Allan and Joel, Easter

In the front of the house of the photo above, one can make out a semicircular flower bed where Nursie grew her favorite flower zinnias. On this trip, though, we had picked some azaleas from Arnie and Newlin's yard in Gainesville and discovered on the way that the flowers concealed several bees who emerged in the car. We had to open the window and chase them out. One bee managed to make the three hour drive and escape from the flowers inside Nursie's home.

Nursie, Newlin, and Eric in Crawfordville, Florida, 1961

Joel and Nursie, Crawfordville, 1961

Allan, Arnie, Joel Nevis, Nursie, Newlin, and Andrew, Easter 1961

In this last photo the three generations (Nursie Ashmore, daughter Newlin Ashmore Nevis and son-in-law Arnold Nevis, and grandsons Allan, Joel and Andrew Nevis) stand in front of Nursie's house in Crawfordville. It is a typical Florida house, built up off the ground to keep critters out and in most cases with a crawl space to allow air to circulate underneath and cool the structure. The style is dubbed a cracker house — a cracker is a native of Florida — and features a covered porch and fireplace, among other things.

Arnie managed to insult his brother-in-law Ludlow when he found out that Ludlow was born on the fourth of July, humorously calling him a cracker in reference to a firecracker set off on Independence Day; cracker is also used as a term for poor rural whites in Georgia and Florida, perhaps a notch below a redneck, so the joke did not go over well.

After Nursie got cancer, Ludlow and Newlin's brother Enwood took her into his house in Tallahassee with Newlin and her three sisters tending to Nursie's care. As appreciation, all the Ashmore siblings donated their shares of the house from Nursie's inheritance to Enwood. Enwood later rented the house to sister Sheryl's son-in-law Charles Barwick and he converted it into a restaurant (named Shay's for his youngest son). It burned down after a few years, about a decade after Nursie's death in 1963.

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Arnold and Newlin: California Nevises 1961

Some photos of the Nevis family in California circa 1961. Leonard sometimes invited Bill, Hazel and Laura out sailing on his sailboat. Hazel and Bill visit Clear Lake and its nearby neighbor Borax Lake in northern California. They visit Bill's family in the Central Valley, enjoying a picnic at Mooney Grove Park (now part of Visalia).

Laura, Hazel, Bill, and Leonard on Leonard's sailboat, Newport Beach, California, circa 1961
Laura looks very young here, so this might be circa 1955 instead

Hazel at Borax Lake (also called Little Borax Lake), circa 1961

Hazel, Clear Lake, California circa 1960

picnic with Nevis relatives in Mooney Grove Park, with Hazel on far left, Stanley Mello, Raymond Mello, Don Rose standing

Stanley Mello, Bill Nevis, Don Rose, and Raymond Mello in Mooney Grove, California, 1961

Lucille Nevis with sons Walter and Larry, circa 1961

Hazel, Lucille, Leonard, and Walter at Rim Forest in 1961 or 1962

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Arnold and Newlin: John and Mary Mason on Dog Island 1960

John and Mary Mason visit Arnie and Newlin in Florida. They all visit Dog Island, located in the Gulf of Mexico, off Florida's panhandle), where in 1959 Arnie and Newlin had bought a lot on the island for $5000 to be able to build a beach house close to Newlin's family, and John and Mary bought an adjacent lot. Both lots had beautiful high dunes facing the Gulf and a sandy road behind them with St. George Sound beyond. To reach Dog Island one took a county-run ferry from Carrabelle, which got discontinued for a while in the 1970s. After the ferry service stopped, the family had to get there with a motor boat towed by car from Gainesville to Carrabelle.

John and Mary Mason, Dog island, Florida, circa 1960

Newlin and Arnie on Dog Island, circa 1960

Google Maps shows Dog Island and Carrabelle; the gray dot is roughly where the two lots lay

Around 1975 Arnie took out a loan to start building a house on the lot but quickly lost interest after he had a heart attack and was very fearful of being too far from a hospital emergency room.

Over the decades hurricanes flattened the dunes and eroded the Gulf side of the lots, depositing the sand on the Sound side. Newlin was able to buy back some 15 feet on the road side for another $5000 to maintain her property as a buildable lot, but by the 1990s another 50 feet lay underwater in the Gulf and she determine the property was largely worthless. Every few years the Franklin County tax collector would try to reclaim back taxes but Newlin refused to pay for valueless land. She tried to give it away to Florida State University, but they wanted her to pay the closing costs and she would not do that either. Newlin and the Masons attempted to see the two lots together as a single parcel but there were no buyers.

Oddly, the island has had the same shape on maps for over 400 years, after first being charted by the French and named Isle des Chiens (Ile des Chiens in modern French) in 1536. I guess it just shifts a bit toward or away from the mainland due to storms.

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Arnold and Newlin: 1960 Gainesville

In the summer of 1960 Arnie accepts a position split between the J. Hillis Miller Health Center in the Neurology Department and at the College of Engineering at the University of Florida. 

He buys a house in a neighborhood called Libby Heights (a name given by the developer but not really used by Gainesvilleans) near an elementary school and a city park. The house at 3448 NW 11th Avenue had four bedrooms, a living room, dining room, two state of the art bathrooms, and a kitchen that was open to the family room. The theme colors in the house were pink and mint green. 

Newlin arrived at the end of the summer eight months pregnant, so Linda, Elise, and Newlin's sister Eloise came down from Crawfordville to unpack and arrange the house.

back of the house in Gainesville, circa 1961

a couple dozen pine trees surround the house; over the years most were cut down

Arnie volunteers to investigate the credentials of the committee
who denied tenure to a colleague in the School of Forestry 

Joel circa 1960; cameras or photographers always triggered tears for a few years

Allan's ID bracelet for the University of Florida Hospital circa 1960

Newlin in the 1960s

Arnie wore a bow tie through the 1950s and switched to a skinny tie (a four-in-hand necktie) by 1960.

Arnie in the 1960s

Allan and Joel circa 1960

Joel and Allan in front of the fireplace at 3448 NW 11th Avenue

Joel and Allan, circa 1960

card for fathers of newborns to present at the nursery window so a nurse can identify their baby, instructions, September 1960

card for fathers of newborns, information side, University of Florida Shands Teaching Hospital, 1960
"Baby Nevis 9-19-60 0940 AM"

birth announcement for Andrew Jason Nevis

birth announcement for Andrew Jason Nevis

Newlin with newborn son Andrew, Gainesville, fall 1960

Newlin with sons Allan, Andrew and Joel, Gainesville, 1960

Joel, Allan and Andrew Nevis, Gainesville, fall 1960

Arnie's certificate of proficiency in the basic sciences, State of Florida, November 15, 1960

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