Keeping up with Mr. Jones

As long as there’s been a Walmart in Iola, Bob Jones has worn its uniform. Most days you’ll find the 60-year-old produce associate tending the bright aisles of fruits and vegetables and the racks of vacuum-packed salads, and helping shoppers who these days often seek him out by name. But if Jones has overturned long odds to become one of the store’s most senior employees — he’s in his 27th year — he refuses to credit himself.
Most stories begin with an “I”: I went to this school, then I got this job, then I joined this club. We’re the heroes of our own adventures. Not with Bob Jones; Bob Jones tells the truer story — that our progress depends on the influence of others.
This is how a Jones story begins: “Ray Houser, one of my instructors — a wonderful man — helped me a lot when I was having a tough time in school….” “Buck Quincy, my basketball coach, was very inspirational….” “Dick Strahl, out at TG&Y, got me started in the retail business….” “Bill Deckinger, the pastor out at Calvary United Methodist, gave me my first bible….”
Jones was putting people first before he ever entered customer service.
He recalls a pivotal scene from high school. “I was not what you’d call an ‘A student,’” remembers Jones. “I just had a rough time passing a lot of tests and everything.” Eventually a school administrator told the teen he probably wasn’t the sort of kid who could make graduation.
The person in the story who sticks out for Jones, however, is the school’s former guidance counselor, T.D. Wheat, who stepped in just when Jones needed him the most. “He told [this administrator], he says ‘Come on, let’s give Bob a chance.’”
These are only a few of the “inspirational” — a favorite word — Iolans who Jones name-checks. But trust that if you’ve ever lent Bob Jones a hand or aimed a kind word his way — even if it was 50 years ago — he remembers you.

JONES GREW up near the railroad tracks in Iola, and his great bond with his father was always based on their love of trains.
“I’m a train fanatic,” says Jones. The pair would often go down to the tracks and watch the engines zip through town and, at home, they spent countless hours on the floor working on model trains.
“Not the plastic stuff,” Jones stresses. “It was the old Lionel stuff.” Jones remembers his dad calling the Madison Hardware Co., in New York, any time one of their model parts busted. “He’d send it up there and every time he’d get it back, they hadn’t packed it right and something else would be broke on it.”
Sometime in the late 1980s the elder Jones passed the set on to his son. “We were supposed to eventually get a place to set it up, but you know how God works — his life didn’t last. Dad worked the last day on his job and went home and had a nice supper and went to bed and that was it. He was 59.”
But it didn’t stop Jones from going down to watch the trains on his own. He’d climb through the long grass at the edge of the tracks to get a better view. “I remember my dad saying that when the Katy used to pass through here, he’d go watch it and the train would send sparks up out of the old smokestack.” On Jones’ own visits he would get close enough to feel the wind from the passing cars. The grass would get whipped up and blow pollen into his eyes. “I was always allergic to the weeds down there, and my eyes would run and swell shut when I’d get to rubbing them.”

A SPORTS fan from the start, in middle school Jones used to bundle up and walk from the family’s Campbell Street home out to the college to watch basketball games. In high school, too, sports offered Jones a consolation that he didn’t always find in the school’s corridors.
Jones was the equipment manager for the football and basketball teams — under coaches Ray Houser and Buck Quincy, respectively — for most of his high school career.
“Like I said, I wasn’t a popular name in school until I got involved in athletics. People might make fun of me, say I wasn’t very smart and this and that. Back then, if you didn’t have a name in school, I’m sorry but you just didn’t have anything. I never did go to any of the dances. I helped clean up for prom when I was a junior but, no, I never did go.”
But he did graduate. Of the administrator who warned him early on of his piddling chances, Jones says: “I made a believer out of him. Today, he’s a wonderful man, who actually thinks a lot of me.
“And check this out,” says Jones. “Back then you only had to have 19 credits to graduate. I had 21. I didn’t give God credit then, but I do now.”

GOD HAS been a potent force in Jones’ life since he was a boy, and a tangible one. “In middle school,” Jones recalls, “I got saved when I went to a Lay Witness Mission over here at Calvary church one Saturday night. We bowed our heads and prayed and I felt something touch me. I asked the guy next to me, but he said ‘No.’”
Jones lowers his voice. “It was God.”
Jones was well into adulthood before another divine shudder passed through his body. “There used to be a real powerful black pastor here in town by the name of Brother James Patton. He was what you call an independent pastor. A wonderful man — do anything for anybody. He’d house people who didn’t have a place to stay. If they had kids, or whatever it was, he’d just bring them in and feed them and look after them and allow God to take care of the rest. He was a wonderful cook; he made me a sweet potato pie one time. We’d often read the bible together. He was a true inspiration on my life.
“Anyway, I was lying at home in bed one night. All of a sudden” — Jones’ eyes get big and his voice drops into a hoarse whisper — “all of a sudden I felt it, and I thought ‘Oh my God, what is this?’”                
Jones got out of bed and called the elderly preacher. “I says ‘What happened Brother Patton, what did you do?’ Brother Patton laughed and said ‘Brother Bob, I waited until you got tucked in bed, and then I asked God to blanket you with his Holy Spirit.’”
Jones credits God with many things, including reversing the shyness that marked his early years. “When I was a member of Community Baptist, God got me to where I got up in front of the people and, with piano accompaniment, I sang ‘How Great Thou Art.’”
Jones carried this new confidence into other facets of his life. Jones was for years a member of the Farm-City Days committee and a volunteer with the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life group.
While a member of the Jaycees, he joined the “clown unit” and performed in wig and face paint at local parades. And one year Walmart asked him to be their Easter Bunny. “I’ve got pictures of that somewhere,” says Jones.
And for almost 13 years, as a sideline, Jones worked as a road manager for a handful of local, mostly country-western, bands — setting up the lights, checking the mics, fielding requests from the crowd.
“Like I said, I love people and I love Iola. I just enjoy helping the community any way I can.”

PERHAPS the biggest portion of Jones’ gratitude goes to the benevolent force that introduced him almost 15 years ago to the woman who would become his wife, Shyrell.
“She’s been a blessing from God. She is my sweetheart and the soul mate of my life,” says Jones.
Jones sits on a couch in the lobby of the Townhouse East apartment building, where he and Shyrell have lived since November. Shyrell is disabled and uses a motorized wheelchair. It’s a warm day and she waits for Jones outside. From where he sits, Jones can see her through the glass door.
“We dated for eight years and then went down to Eureka Springs and got married on a cruise ship. We went out on the boat to the highest point, where you could see down on everything. A lady minister married us there at three o’clock in the afternoon. Then we had Sprite for our drink and homemade coconut cream pie for our cake. Then we came home.”
With Shyrell, arrived a thing Jones otherwise thought might pass him by: a family. “I’ve got now, by marriage, three wonderful children and seven grandbabies. It just thrills me. If it wasn’t for God, I wouldn’t have my wonderful wife. I wouldn’t have a family. I wouldn’t have my friends. Or my job. I thank God every morning when I get up. I say thank you for another day, thank you for my wife, my children, my grandchildren, and on down.”
Residents pass in and out of the building’s vestibule. Some head toward the stairs, others stop and wait at the elevator door. Everyone waves and says hi to Bob. But that’s true anywhere he goes. 
“Everybody I talk to who’s known me for a lot of years,” says Jones, “they say ‘Bob, we’re really proud of you. You came a long way.’” But, as usual, Jones deflects the credit: It was because of his inspirational mentors, he says, because of his friends, his family, God.

JONES HAS a sort of spiritual juicer in his brain, so that no matter how many lemons life serves him, his take on his own story always comes out lemonade.
Does he harbor any grudge toward a world that didn’t always repay his kindness or any ill-feeling toward those schoolmates who sometimes made it difficult for him when he was young?
“Nope. I enjoy people and I enjoy my classmates. I think I had the best class ever. I was held back for two years, went to kindergarten twice, but I’ll take the class I got over and over again. Most of these folks have all my respect and some of them are my close friends. It’s just awesome how it all worked out. We all grew up. Some of the people that picked on me back then, we’re just as close as best buddies.”
Of course it may be that many of these new friends find, in the example of Jones’ life and in the pure tones of his generosity, something very much like inspiration.