Donning goodness

Air Force veteran Donald Jones smiled as he recalled his adventures overseas and his days as a postal worker, bonding with his customers. The span of his life has shown his generosity and commitment to kindness for his fellow humans.
Jones graduated from Ville Platte High in 1973. His first job was Ardoin’s Auto Sales in Opelousas. From there, he worked at the Ville Platte hospital, starting as a custodian then working in the lab and X-ray department, drawing blood and taking X-rays and developing films. He also worked for Sears on Coreil Street in Ville Platte. But it was his job as a secretary at St. Paul’s Baptist Church in Ville Platte that led him to his future bride. While chauffeuring for the preacher, Jones met a young woman named Alice, who was the secretary at Jerusalem Baptist Church in Opelousas. After courting for a few years, they got married in 1978, a year before he joined the Air Force. He has been married to Alice Marie Lewis Matthews for 42 years, “but if you count the dating it’s a total of 48,” said Jones. “I married a gem.” They have two children, Sharon and Donnie. “They’re both doing excellent. When you have kids, you have to raise them the right way. You have to take your time and teach them. That’s what we did. We raised our two the way we were raised. Spare the rod and spoil the child. You did wrong, you got dealt with. Today it’s all different. You can’t be a friend to your kids.”
In 1979 Jones joined the Air Force, getting his training in San Antonio. “They put us in this huge room and it was so noisy. I had a headache. I had never flown before. I stood up, turned around and said, ‘Shut the hell up, damn it!’ You could hear a pin drop. All of the instructors that were there with us all nodded their heads, but I didn’t know what they were nodding for until we all got on base and were separated. When we got upstairs in the dormitory, the instructor said, ‘Airman Jones.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir?’ ‘You’re going to be my dorm chief.’” Jones basically became a “bona fide babysitter” for 47 airmen.
As dorm chief Jones encouraged his fellow airmen to win the competition for Honor Flight. The competition included drill and command movements and a written test. They wound up winning Honor Flight Flag. History seemed to repeat itself when Jones went into the Air Force’s tech school when he once again tried to quiet down a noisy room. “I stood up and opened my mouth again. I got caught again. I was in charge of the floor. So I said, ‘I need to start shutting my mouth.’” While in tech school, he got orders to go to Germany, but he did not want to go there. A female airman, who was from Germany and still had family in Germany, had received orders to go to England. She and Jones swapped, and Jones soon found himself stationed at the Royal Air Force Bentwaters/Woodbridge twin bases in England.
Once in England, he had two jobs, one of which was in supply logistics. The other job he could not talk about, but it allowed him to leave the base for two weeks at any given point and come back, get processed, and fly out again on another secret mission. Jones smiled, “It was a very good adventure. I went to Germany, Turkey, Italy, and I’ve been to Viet Nam, Korea. And when I came back from all this travel, I would go to the Pentagon several times, and I’d go to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and Dyess Air Force Base in Texas. I was always in the air. I was never really in one place for six months. I was gone all the time, but that didn’t matter. I enjoyed it.”
While in England, Jones got to work with the chaplain with the new troop orientation. “New troops are young, they’ve never been away from home, they would cry all the time. I was helping the chaplain with them, because they’d go to the chaplain to talk.” He fondly recalled taking a trip to Canterbury and ended up at the Canterbury Cathedral. “The chaplain’s wife and I were walking the pathway to go into the church. When we opened the doors, there was something that hit us in the face. Our bodies just felt chilly. We looked at each other. She said, ‘Do you feel that?’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s kind of strange.’” They went back out and walked back in, and the same thing happened. Winded, they sat down. “She said, ‘You know what that is?’ I said, ‘Yes, I know what that is. That’s the whirl of the Holy Spirit.’ That’s what that was. As we walked closer to the altar, it would get stronger and stronger.” After a while, Jones and the chaplain’s wife explored the cathedral separately. He went to the basement where there was a crypt and plaque on the floor labeled “Thomas Becket.” St Thomas Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury and was believed to have died as a martyr in 1170 while defending the rights of the Church after a bitter dispute with Henry II. Jones said that spot in the crypt marked where Becket was slain. He also got a chance to see the tomb of Edward Woodstock, also known as “The Black Prince” or “The Black Knight.” Woodstock was a warrior in the Hundred Years War between England and France. “The place is full of history. If I had my choice of countries to live in, England would be the one.”
Jones recalled a time when he went with his fellow airman to his fiance’s home and Jones made them all a gumbo. He made a roux with the young woman’s cooking oil and flour and had some chicken and sausage. The commissary happened to have some blue crabs. Everyone thought it was delicious and when they went to pick up the dishes, one boy was licking the bowl, saying “This is good. I like that!” “I’ve never seen anybody lick a gumbo bowl in my life until that day,” said Jones.
Jones said another friend of his, Al, got married while in England. Jones helped decorate the hall and the cake. “The cake was just there. It had no life. It was just plain. I went out and got some wisteria, and I put the wisteria all the way down around the base of the cake and around the plate. That went off without a hitch.”
After the wedding, Jones returned to the base and was told he had to go home to the U.S. because of a misunderstanding with a man who had the same name as his. The man had done something illegal, and Jones had to clear it up. “I said I can’t go back to England empty-handed.” He brought back some Pig Stand barbeque sauce and some Jack Miller’s. “The 4th of July was like a week later. I got up, got all my stuff together, went downstairs and to the park and started barbequing. It was smelling so good! Everybody in the dormitory where I was came down to the park, and everybody around came down to the park, wanting to know what that was. So we set up all the tables, we ate, and we had a good time. But we ran out of barbeque. It was only supposed to be just for the floor, but everybody else came.” He said the chow hall was generous by letting him store everything there. “If I needed something, I’d go and they’d give it to me, which was nice. We had a good ol’ time. The way we cooked, they were loving it. I just had a grand time with my military stay!”
After England Jones was stationed in Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. While there, he paid a visit to the Lackland Air Force Base, also in San Antonio, to see if his instructors were still there, and they were. They got a chance to visit, and Jones got to speak to the new troops about starting an Air Force career.
Jones said San Antonio was another good experience and he even had a part-time job working at the main Base Exchange where you could buy clothing and furniture, etc. Jones and his friend, Danny, were just getting off work one day, when an elderly lady was coming out of the store with a lot of items. They found out she had been married and widowed three times and had no children. She didn’t have anyone to help her unload her items, so Jones and Danny followed her home to help. She wound up becoming a good friend and even rented out a guest house to Danny. “When we went to the grocery store, we’d bring her. When we went shopping, we’d bring her. Take her to church, do her gardening work, everything for her, just being nice to her. And whenever we did something, we’d involve her, because like I said, she didn’t have any family.” Jones said he spoke to Danny last year, and he’s still in San Antonio, but the lady passed away. She left everything to Danny. “She was a very good person. We enjoyed being around her.”
When he left the Air Force in 1983, Jones came back to Ville Platte from San Antonio because his mother and mother-in-law were still here. After they passed away, he decided to stay. “Ville Platte is not a bad place to live.” However, he said, “We’re at the point where nobody gives a dame.” He said the rental properties are not being taken care of.
A few years later, Jones became a postal worker at the Ville Platte Post Office. He started in 1987 and worked for 26 years, sorting mail and walking a route. His route was Main Street, and when he was done with that, he’d go help the other carriers. He developed such a good relationship with the customers they’d offer him to sit and eat and invited him to family events like weddings, anniversaries, christenings, etc. “I had a very good relationship with all of my customers.” He said one time he was walking his route, and there were people shooting at each other in between the houses. One of his customers let him take a break on their porch until the police got there. Once the police arrived and got control of the situation, Jones delivered the mail. Another time, he said the got a truck late, which delayed the carriers’ routes. It was dark outside. The customers put all their porch lights on to help him see so he could make his deliveries.
Now, Jones is happily retired and loves gardening, planting a spring and summer vegetable garden and tending to his flower beds. He is on the Civil Service Board and has been the Senior Vice Commander for the VFW for about 20 years. He’s been a member for over 30 years. “And I enjoy it. Those old guys are something else! They make us laugh. It’s a lot of fun, because they make it interesting.” He said they would like some new members to join the VFW, to get some younger veterans. He would especially like to have a chaplain since Father Richard Vidrine retired.
Jones also volunteers at Heritage Manor Nursing Home where he and other VFW members barbeque once a month for the staff and patients. They haven’t been able to do that since the pandemic started, but they still volunteer, giving money for the BINGO games, ice cream parties during the summer, and other holiday celebrations, and they donate money to help with activities. The VFW also has their annual poppy drive to raise money for the VFW hall. Jones also worked with the Smoked Meat Festival over 20 years. He started participating in the festival in honor of his two uncles who were Viet Nam veterans.
Above all, Jones enjoys helping people. “I volunteer wherever I can. If somebody needs help, they call me and I go.” He helps some of the families at St. John Baptist Church. When he was employed at the Post Office, he became good friends with an elderly lady whose mail he used to deliver. He became close to her and her husband. “To this day, I go and visit and we sit and talk, try to figure out how to fix the world. We have good laughs. When I cook, I bring her something. When I do the barbeque at the nursing home I always fix her a plate and bring it to her. If she needs something done, I go do it. I don’t do it for payment. I just do it because I want to do it.”
Jones said he often passes the old Ville Platte Cemetery, and recently something was telling him to clean the graves where the parents of someone he knows are laid to rest. He told his wife that something was telling him to clean the graves. “My wife said, ‘What you gonna do?’ I said, ‘I guess I’m going to go do it.’” Last week, he cleaned them and painted them. He said the lady was so happy when she found out he had cleaned her parents’ graves. “I could see the gleam in her eyes. She was so happy.”
Reflecting on today’s generation, Jones said he wished today’s younger people cared more, especially about their home town. “Our city is an embarrassment.” He said he had some old Air Force friends from Boston, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island come to town for a reunion. “When they turned off of Soileau Street and got in this section, it was real bad. It was nasty. When they drove up, one of them said, ‘Jonesy, man, you live in a trash ben.’” Another one said, “Jonesy lives in a trash heap.” Jones said that made him feel small and was thankful they were staying at Chicot Park in a group cabin and did not come back to town for anything. They hunted, fished, went to Crooked Creek, and went to a casino. “I never took them around Ville Platte because I was embarrassed, and I’m still embarrassed. It’s a shame. You need to take care of your city.” Jones said he lives in The Woods neighborhood. “From Oak Street all the way to Hickory, and all the points in between, it’s nasty. It’s dirty.”
Also commenting on today’s generation he said, “Nobody knows how to be nice. Everybody has an attitude.” He said he and Alice taught their children to be nice to people, be respectful, be obedient, and always be humble.