Local vet reflects on decades of service, support of military

Robert Jones had no plans of going into the United States Army nearly 60 years ago.

He was the son of a soldier who'd died in World War II. He was married, and he was an adult who already had a job in law enforcement.

"With the exception of being in the National Guard, those three things separately were supposed to keep you from being drafted," Jones said. "But somehow - even with all three of those aspects about me being true - my name was called."

"I'd gone through basic training and it was really hard on me, and one of the draft officers told me my paperwork was catching up to me and I'd be given the opportunity to go home," Jones said. "But training tested me so much that I wasn't sure I was ready to walk away and wonder what if I'd stayed.

"So I discussed it with my wife, and we hadn't started our family yet. She was OK. I was OK with the situation of me going. So I decided to do it."

So in 1966, Jones left his wife in Pasadena, Calif., where he'd taken his job as a policeman after growing up in Tennessee and shipped off to the Army. He was stationed in Panama to handle the canal zone because of his experience.

He served his two years and came home.

A few years after coming home, Jones joined the Guard and stayed with the Reserves for decades. He was called in the 1990s to Eastern Europe to help in the uprising in Kosovo and Bosnia.

That's where he still was in 2001 when the 9-11 attacks happened.

"We were 12 hours ahead of Eastern time zone, and we'd heard the US had been attacked, but that was all the info we could get back then," Jones said. "So we were thinking if someone is attacking us on our soil, it must've been something big and only a few countries had the capabilities to do something big militarily.

"We thought it was something with nukes involved."

It was the following year Jones aged out of the Guard.

But in the two decades since he left the military, Jones has continued to support the troops as much as he can.

He's one of the people that first coordinated the West Tennessee Veterans' Coalition, and on Monday, he was with a number of other people involved in the coalition honoring veterans on Veterans' Day.

Four bridges in Madison County over Interstate 40 held groups of people waving flags and encouraging support for the troops.

They heard and saw that moral support returned as drivers would honk their horns as they passed under the group. Some drivers waved to the people. Others saluted the flag.

"I salute them back if I see them in time," Jones said. "But they're traveling 70 or 80 miles an hour, so I don't see everyone in time."

Jones has a granddaughter that's in college who'd come home for the weekend and headed out. She called him after driving past him to tell him bye and wish him Happy Veterans' Day.

"That's the greatest thing that's happened for me in this life - my family," Jones said. "But other than them, probably the biggest thing that's happened to me is joining the Army.

"I learned so much and really became a different person because of all the lessons learned that to this day still help me. I'm proud to have served. I'd do it again if I could and I was needed."

Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news