Roger James Jones
August 18, 1941 – November 27, 2020
Roger's whistle-stop of life Eternal ... our earthbound journey continues...
Roger James Jones - 8/18/1941 - 11/27/2020 of Loveland, Colorado passed away on Friday, November 27, 2020. Roger was born on August 18, 1941, in St, Louis MO. Here let me give you a sense about Roger.
Roger recently found an old photo of his parents before he was born, with the Christmas tree in the background, and underneath was a Lionel train set going around, so you could say Roger was into trains before he was born.
Roger was born in St. Louis, MO and then moved to several places.
Early childhood RR memories, Roger while he was in grade school, decided to follow the train tracks near his house all across St. Louis to the Zoo. By the time he got to the Zoo, it was dark and the police called his parents and his older brother Warren had to drive there to pick him up. Roger didn’t say much about the consequences, but let’s just say he knew his parents were not pleased.
Roger's parents decided Warren should attend Principia Upper School, and Roger was left to attend the public school, where he was well known by the principal, being quite incorrigible. So, at the holiday break, Roger who didn't like the school lunch program AT ALL, announced that after holiday break he was going to attend the lower school at the Town and Country Principia campus. He came home with a letter from his public school principal announcing to his parents that they had approved the transfer. The shock in his parents faces is still fresh in Roger's thoughts, but thankfully his parents made it work and Roger worked as much as he could to help out and attended Prin. He loved soccer, football and track, and he told me of horror stories of taking 3 buses to go to and from campus and participate in all those activities. His favorite place to eat was and still is, Steak-N-Shake. Probably because the one in St. Louis was right close to where the bus stopped so he could go there to get dinner on Wednesday nights with his mother who was also working part time at the school to offset tuition.
As an adult, Roger worked for IBM (“I've Been Moved") which helped carry him far and wide throughout his adult life. Roger's parents helped to develop the travel bug early in life, with having to travel to London, England for 9 months when his Dad who worked for Mobile converted to an IBM tabulation machines right when Roger was starting 8th grade. Roger was enrolled into attend The American School of London (ASL) and graduated there with Harry Truman giving their commencement address to the 23 or so students. Roger, spent the first several weeks in London reading Huckle Berry Finn because he was homesick for St. Louis. Roger's older brother, Warren had enlisted in the Army as a draftsman, so Warren stayed in the states at the time, so Roger quickly became the money converter in the flat, exchanging French, English, Dutch, German money as needed with ease, the family photographer, and memorized the Tube map (subways) in England.
As a result we have 20 wax paper boxes full of slides from their trip overseas, and when we went back to vacation in London, Roger knew how to get around, with very little effort. Roger's parents took full advantage of being so close to the smaller European countries and they traveled by train to see most of them in person. Roger admitted that going to all the historic sites was a little draining, but later in life he was so grateful to have had a chance to see them. London was just getting over coffee rationing when they arrived and there were bullet holes in the walls of their flat. Roger fondly remembers playing American football, as well as English Soccer with his classmates and grew quite fond of both sports. Roger attended Sunday School in London, and had Anne Kenrich (sp?) as his Sunday school teacher. Roger loved her class and enjoyed the fact that she would frequently have social picnics when the weather was nice out at her place where Roger could enjoy swimming in the pond and water fountains in her English garden.
At one point Roger and his school buddies were sitting on the steps of the American Embassy eating their bag lunch which was right across the Governors Square from ASL, and they saw a large black limo stopped at the corner in front of them, and Roger nudged his buddy and asked "Is that who I think it is? Nikita Khrushchev?!" They had two soldiers in the car armed with machine guns, so the boys tried to blend into the steps and disappear. Memories of WWII was not that far removed yet.
The family returned to the States from London to live on Long Island, New York where his dad would take the train to New York to continue to work as an accountant for Mobile, and Roger got his first taste of working by being an errand boy to carry messages on the New York subway for Mobile's clients, and got pretty good at it because he quickly memorized the subway maps and knows how to negotiate the city, to this day! He spent his off hours playing with the IBM tabulating machines and circuit boards and Tubes and wires. He developed a serious interest in computers before most of the world knew what the word meant. His dad being a train buff, was given a handful of parts that the IBM sales engineer who became a good family friend said those parts could be used to automatically stop and start the train to hesitate long enough to "drop off and pickup passengers". Roger's dad didn't know about electronics so the parts were just put in a box and kept with Roger's Dad's train parts. Two years ago (some 70 years later, Roger had a dream of how to put the pieces together and put them on our train layout in the basement), he did it and it works wonders! While on Long Island, Roger loved body surfing at Jones Beach, and had his first demonstration of protection with the undertow of 20 foot sea swells. Roger said his mother told him she prayed daily for his protection, and that she was a much better practitioner than she realized. He attended Merrimack High School and his biggest thrill was when a Jewish cheer leader sat on his lap at a game. Roger said his parents were party animals, in that his mom would always have a way to provide a meal and party fare for either his dads work friends, church friends, or Roger and Warren’s school friends. Roger was always the DJ of sorts because he had all the 45’s and the stereo to play music till the cows came home. He still has a box of his favorite 45’s that he transferred to a USB drive in the past 10 years, so he could play them in his car.
Once back in St. Louis Roger attended Principia College, the first Elsah, IL campus classes, as a Westie (Rackam West) member he quickly made lifelong connections that are still amazing today. Trivia question for Principia reunions – if they ask you who rang the Chapel bells and had to write a 20 page paper on the architect for the building, it’s Roger…. Did I say he’s incorrigible? There were others involved but we’ll not entangle them in this yarn.
Roger has been a member of the Christian Science church in every location he has lived, often starting the church with a small group in St. Louis, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Nebraska, Colorado Springs, Black Forest, Westcliffe, and finally Loveland, Colorado, and he is a member of The Mother Church in Boston, MA and had been through class instruction, and in fact just attended his association address over Zoom in October.
Work places were varied and challenging, if the job had been done before he didn't want it, because it would be too boring. Milwaukee school of engineering, JC Penny online catalogue, IBM, Cibar, and eventually Cibar Systems Institute (CSI).
Roger has 3 older children, David Jones, Chris Jones, and Heather Gavin who all almost all live in Colorado again (Chris has property in CA as well). When these three were school age it made sense to take a position with Principia College as a computer science instructor and develop a full undergrad curriculum for Computer Science for the College that they still use today. After this was done, Roger took the idea as an off-campus study and move back to Colorado Springs, starting a small school there. His students became coders for the military, NASA, Banks, and computer engineers for companies like Hewlett-Packard, etc.. He had responses from employers saying “I’ll take as many students you have, because they understood how to get things done.
Life shifted for Roger and he took off up north to the school in Longmont. Thanks to the PC at this point, colleges were more driven to take on teaching computer science on campus, so things needed to change and Roger started working for Learning Tree International, teaching thousands of one week classes all over the world. Stapleton airport became a second home to him, flying out on Sunday and coming home on Friday just in time to wash clothes, and head off to his next class. He always got the highest reviews of any instructor, due in part because of his quick wit and talent for teaching. Roger also took on teaching under his own business name CSI (Complete Systems Innovations) his most memorable classes being in Bermuda, for the Bank there. He could only rent a Moped, and had to wear a suit everyday teaching, so things got quite inventive. The island at the time had only ONE fast food restaurant - Kentucky Fried, it used to have two a Taco Bell, but the locals burned it down. I took a class on web design at HP by a company called Batkey Howell, and the instructor bemoaned the fact that he had to teach (being the owner of the company and more suited to developing markets and class structure) because they didn’t have enough instructors. I gave him Roger’s card and told him to give him a call, as a result Roger was hired and happily gave up travelling and instead drove down to the Tech Center every day for about five years. He said it never got old being able to see the front range mountains all year long, and to make it fun he was hooked on listening to books on Tape, CD and eventually online while on the drive. Roger loved to read, so this way he got a chance to read vicariously. He also loves music, and still to this day listens to 88.1 for classical, and 90.7 for the KGUD station out of Longmont. He said they have my musical taste and collection. Roger taught Graduate database class at CSU for several years, and I can’t tell you the number of foreign students that would call our house PLEADING that they needed at least a B to stay on campus, and asking if there was anything they could do as extra credit. His answer was always the same… A couple years ago, Front Range got ahold of Roger’s resume, and asked him to teach them some corporate training classes using Federal Grant money to pay for the employee reeducation. He agreed and as a result the five or six classes he taught paid for a Biblos Trip to Greece and Turkey to follow the travels of Paul from the bible.
His interest in teaching NEVER left, in fact he recently posted his resume online for WizeAnt, a website for teachers to list their skills in just about any walk of life (sewing, cooking, business, computers, etc…) mostly he got College kids who needed someone to help them learn a computer language, or pass a test. Most of them got more than they bargained for, like drinking through a fire hose.
Roger and I wanted to have some land in Colorado and build a cabin, so we purchased 35 acres in Elk Haven, Westcliffe, CO and started to plan. We bought a used Chevy pickup and used it to drive to and from. I bought books on how to build a cabin and we picked out a cabin kit that would result in a 1,000 sq ft of living space, which was the minimum size to meet the HOA requirements. We had a concrete slab poured and put in a septic system and toilet drainage inside the foundation. We bought a shed kit on a Friday afternoon sale and drove it down there from Fort Collins with our two dogs (smokey and bear). We built the shed and stayed in a hotel in Westcliffe attended the local CS society on Sunday and headed back home to Loveland for work on Monday.
After about nine years of marriage to me, Mary, we decided to become foster parents, and quickly learned that the only way to really help a child is to adopt them, so they have a solid home environment. We sent out our bio explaining that we were willing to adopt anyone who wanted to be raised in Christian Science to all of the CS practitioners in the Journal using some optical character reading software on a scanner at HP to make up the mailing labels, one year made an amazing connection with a family of 8 year old Kenzie, 6 year old Jordan and 2 year old Matt. Through prayer and divine guidance we found a way to make them a home. The three are now amazingly adventurous adults living in Las Vegas, Oregon and St. Louis. The journey continues...
After 9/11 all out of town classes dried up as no one was flying and Mary was laid off at HP, so in an effort to do something together and help our family be more financially secure, we both joined forces with Primerica (PRI on the NYSE). Roger was engaged to help each of his clients and tended to get frustrated when people who needed to do something were too afraid of change. As one always says to really learn something - you have to teach it. I was going stir crazy and wanted to take a trip, so I signed up for Southwest Airlines Mystery trip, buying 5 round trip tickets to one of several locations at $99 dollars a piece. Affordable and exciting. They only called you the night before your flight and told you the temperature to pack for. You found out where you were headed when you went to the gate. We ended up going to Nashville, TN! So we toured the Parthenon, went to the Thomas Jefferson Hermitage, and several civil war battle fields that had been turned into parks. Had southern tea and barbeque as well as listened to some Dolly Parton. Fun trip, and educational for everyone.
About this time we got a Shiba Inu dog, and called him Java, we both being computer nerds at heart, and him looking like a cappuccino latte, or since the breed is from Japan, it also works that the island Java is in the same hemisphere. Roger LOVES Java, so much so that if I bump into him or he makes a sound - I am the one in the dog house. He is the best dog both of us ever had.
Roger loves music, dancing, mending his own articles of clothing, cooking certain favorite recipes (chicken and dumplings, or Ribs with Maul's barbeque sauce. Spaghetti was his go to meal or side dish. White Spaghetti boiled with celery and made with cheese wiz and milk) or Red (Hunts Tomato sauce with fried green pepper and onion) made most dishes work. Oh, yeah - Roger loved to ski too, and taught all six kids to do it, but belabored the fact that as soon as they got the hang of it - they left him in the dust…
Back in 2012 or so, Roger competed in the senior Olympics in Fort Collins, and took second place in the half mile for his age group, with one a week or two of training for it. He continued to play club soccer until he was 65, at which point Mary suggested that he might be better off to not slide tackle the players 30 years younger anymore. He loved to go to the pool and jump on the diving board (he used to teach trampoline in college, so he had some pretty cool moves), and when he did at the local pool in town all of the little kids would take a break from whatever they were doing and come and watch him, hoping that they could learn how to do it themselves.
I recently made Roger a new business card, and in searching for a title for him I came across this one, which seems to fit: Luminary 1. a person who inspires or influences others especially one prominent on a particular sphere. I would describe Roger as being a luminary on earth... He always had something interesting or challenging to debate over, and you always learned something!
Donation to something that makes you happy and brings joy to someone else and you will honor Roger!
