With November 8th being the finale of my current UK sporting holiday, I’m flying back to the United States late this morning. And since Blighty is 5-hours ahead of Maryland, I might even arrive in time to join my sister and brother-in-law for dinner. Lynette, why not make something special then? But November 8th is also the finale of the Octave of All Saints. And if that isn’t enough, it is my maternal grandfather’s birthday, too. Glenn David Jones would be 120-ans today if he were still with us. Therefore, to conclude my observance of the Octave, it is fitting that I comment on his life as well as how it relates to mine, all the while implicitly reflecting upon the lives of others counted among the Faithful Departed.
Grandpa Jones was my role model, seeming to me as if he was the Father of our Country, and not just on account of familial affection but for a variety of reasons. If I am to pin it down, then I think it’s due to his general charism. For example, he boxed and was on the verge of turning professional but became a Methodist minister instead. That’s quite a one-two combination. Yet, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Grandpa Jones was born on November 8th, 1904. I believe it was in the evening. The time of day, though, is an educated guess. My mother would know. However, she passed away in April 2020, and the death of a human being unfortunately also entails the loss of information. Yet regarding location, on that I am certain: My grandfather’s birthplace was Wise’s Cabin in Fox’s Gap – the central theatre of action in the Battle of South Mountain on September 14th, 1862. So while it provided modest comfort in November 1904, it was in the thick of it and pretty well shot-up 42-years and 2-months earlier. In fact, I remember, in my ‘Dennis the Menace’ years, my mother telling me the story told her by Grandpa Jones told him by Great-Grandma Loretta (Fox) Jones of the Confederate dead that had been hastily buried in the dry well out front.
Now, the impression I have of Glenn’s father, my great-grandfather John D. Jones, is that he was a bit of a rogue, which actually is a recurring trait on the Jones-side of the Jones family. Unlike the Foxes, who were generally stoic and bookish, the Jones’s were exuberant and rowdy. They were people the community easily paced. Even so, John was a good provider and able to support his household by working as a mason – an important detail because his household was expanding, too, and I think it was in 1908 that, after my Great Aunt Orpha or Great Uncle Alonzo was born, the growing family had to move into a larger cabin further down South Mountain, closer to Boonsboro.
Unfortunately, John died in September 1913, leaving Loretta and the children destitute. They were literally starving. For this reason, Grandpa Jones and his two older siblings had to drop out of school and take whatever jobs they could land. Yet from all that my mother told me, while his sister Orpha had the hardest time adjusting to poverty, she also had it the easiest. For unlike the older three, she and her two younger siblings remained in school. Orpha, though, also had a wealthy benefactor (an elderly woman), who made it possible for her to attend and complete university. This was in the 1920s: a time when few people, especially females, received a university education.
But back to Grandpa Jones. Despite being intelligent and competent, his educational path included neither university nor seminary. Rather, it was actually quite unorthodox, making it a story to recount in its own right.
Again, life turned hard for John’s wife and children in the wake of his death. Yet eventually, Loretta’s brother, David Fox, took them in. Now, the Foxes lived in Yellow Springs and in Frederick, Maryland. And soon David moved Loretta and the children to quarters on North Bentz Street in the latter. While residing there, they attended Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church. When I walk by it today, situated on the corner of North Bentz and West 2nd Street as it is, it initially strikes me as being too upscale for their station in life. For people self-segregate socioeconomically, and Calvary’s architecture is Norman Gothic Revival, evoking the likes of the Plantagenets, which is something only a wealthy congregation could afford back then as well as now.
But then everything makes perfect sense once I walk a little further up North Bentz. Firstly, being only a few blocks away from where they lived, Calvary was the closest Methodist congregation and thus it was naturally their neighborhood church. Secondly, there is the ‘Fox Factor.’ Yes, the Jones-side of the Jones family had it in them to disturb the peace (My favorite Jones-side story is when my great-great grandmother Jones chased the Sheriff away with a hatchet when he came to arrest her son – one of Grandpa Jones’ uncles – after he broke some serious law.). Even so, Loretta and Grandpa Jones and his siblings were remarkably erudite and refined given their circumstances, punching well above their weight socioeconomically. And I think that is what made it possible for them to blend in at upscale Calvary Methodist Episcopal Church.
For a time, Grandpa Jones and his older brother John Grayson worked at a brickyard. The way he described it to me when I was younger was that it was extremely hard labor for a boy. Grandpa Jones’ situation, though, eventually turned for the better when he was hired by Frederick News Post, which subsequently apprenticed him as a printer. Now formally, he had only a third-grade education. But apprenticing as a printer forced him to read voraciously. And he did just that. Grandpa Jones so effectively self-educated that, when he took exams for employment at the Department of Commerce during World War 2, his level was that of university graduate. So on behalf of Glenn, thank you Frederick News Post.
Working at the Department of Commerce was Grandpa Jones’ way of contributing to the war effort. However, it was a temporary measure. For being a Christian minister from the late 1920s to early 1945, it was only a matter of time before he’d wear the collar again, and that is what happened. Now, he has too many career highlights as a minister for me to do justice to it all here. I will therefore return to his charism and leave it at that.
Grandpa Jones’ easiest and apparently most fruitful assignment, according to my mother, was his pastorate in Syracuse, New York. But easy-living was never to be his lot. This was because he had a gift for setting aright troubled congregations that were on the verge of splitting or folding, especially as a consequence of clerical misconduct. “If a minister ruins himself,” he would say, “it’s either by a woman or by money.”
Well, Glenn avoided even the appearance of evil. For example, he always brought Evelyn, my grandmother Jones, along whenever visitation entailed lone female parishioners. In fact, I remember mom relating the story of this tart who attended the church he pastored in Jackson, Michigan, and who telephoned one winter day requesting an emergency visit. Bless her heart, was she embarrassed when she opened the front door wearing only a sheer negligée and saw Glenn standing there with Evelyn beside him – very colorful; the stuff of pulp-fiction.
I like to think Illicit Dames-n-Dollars Syndrome is actually a low percentage problem among clergy that only appears larger as a function of raw numbers. But low or high, bishops sent Grandpa Jones to churches that needed rehabilitating. That indeed was a large component of his charism and a quality that defined him in the public sphere.
Interestingly, while Grandpa Jones remained devoutly Christian, he stopped attending church once he retired from the ministry in 1969. I remember many Sunday mornings, we’d detour over to W. 8th Street in Frederick, where Grandpa and Grandma Jones lived, to bring Evelyn to church with us while Glenn stayed home and watched news and sports. Quite humorously, the latter also included professional wrestling, which he knew was spectacle, a form of theatre-in-the-round, and yet he’d complain about the dirty tactics and poor refereeing as if it wasn’t. But back to topic, when we pressed him to explain why he played hooky, his reply always was that if he attended, they’d ask him to pray.
I’ll add a little commentary here. Firstly, Grandpa Jones was a reserved, dignified man who disliked drawing attention to himself. Secondly, Methodists actually are Low Church Anglicans. Thirdly, the lower you go in Anglican churchmanship, the more Protestant and the less Catholic it is in every way including liturgy. You might say that while High Church types flunked Latin, their Low Church brethren never bothered taking it, opting for an extra art class instead. Well Methodists, being Low Church, tend toward the Protestant side and therefore generally employ an extemporaneous form of worship. So it’s true: A guy – especially a retired minister – attending a Methodist service might be asked to improvise the Collect or the Prayers of the People.
Grandpa Jones, however, succumbed to family pressure every now and then and would give God His due on a Sunday morning. But it was a rare thing. Funny, the last time I remember us prevailing upon him, it was in the late 1980s and guess what happened? Yep, he was asked to pray. But Grandpa Jones did it graciously.
The simplest answer I can give to rationalize Glenn’s behavior is that his career of rehabilitating troubled churches took its toll, leaving him ecclesially exhausted. However, I believe the best explanation is one that also takes into account the reality that, lifelong, he avoided all civic association outside of church and had few friends. He did not have a clubby bone in his body.
To be clear, Grandpa Jones was warm and personable. He was well liked by parishioners and neighbors. Yet beyond family, he reflexively kept people at arm’s length, never once letting anyone get close. Now, I think this trait served him well when he was in the ministry inasmuch as he was above reproach with respect to playing favorites. Once he retired, though, it made it too easy for him to completely disengage from society and he simply left the arena altogether. I sorely wish he hadn’t. Anyhow, I miss the man. I think he understood me even better than I understood myself.
So here I am today, 56-years old. My goal is to live a Christian life, just as Glenn did, so that mine will be a Christian death, the doorway through which I’ll enter the Life Everlasting. Yet, there’s more to it than just confessing The Faith and keeping the Commandments. It also entails using one’s time in this life properly. And therein lies the challenge. Because that requires as much art as it does science, especially since I may have a lot more time than I want.
The plot now thickens in the same manner as every good story’s. The reality is that my primary care doctor tells me I’m north of the 99th percentile on the wellness scale and, while I’m in my mid-fifties, I’m physically the equivalent of a 35-year old. That’s good. My sister, for her part, thinks I’ll be the last man standing. That’s bad. For a long run of perpetual sadness is not something I desire.
Mind you, I am not referring to depression. I do not get depressed, which is something that same doctor marveled over after learning that nearly all of the life I thought was mine – one I’d only reluctantly accepted but afterwards gave everything to preserve – had collapsed within the short span of three years (2019 to 2022). Even my cat died (Come on, God! Holly was my pal!). Yet, I’ve too sunny a disposition by nature for depression to take hold.
No, that which I speak of is not a mood disorder. Rather, it is the entirely normal, clear-eyed emotion that accompanies having to go on when the things you care about most are no longer here. In fact, turn out the lights and play Sarah Brightman’s rendition of Handel’s Lascia Ch’io Pianga on a loop because the sadness never goes away. Even when you’re chipper, it still occupies a corner of your mind. For me, it’s like dealing with that constant companion, ennui. All you do is manage it. And that is an art hard to master.
But if being the last man standing is my fate, then I pray that I’ll follow Grandpa Jones’ pattern. He was quite ambulatory and sharp almost to the end, going out like a meteor just before his 87th birthday. I do not want a long twilight. Although not even retirement is for me. In other words, I want to finish my course in this life even better than Grandpa Jones did his.
