With the very best teachers, it is not just what they taught, it is how they taught us. On the big lecture days, Ron Jones’ American history class became as much theater as it was classroom. He would begin behind the podium that bore a student-painted caricature of him, and then start walking about the classroom – his stage – wielding his omnipresent pointer as punctuation, pausing dramatically, using the blackboard for an occasional illustration.
History was not a dry subject for his students; it was a series of stories about the great and the small that taught us the grand sweep of history. We rode with Teddy Roosevelt. We were spectators to an obscure civil war general’s death as Ron’s hands mimed the gentle fall of the peach blossoms. We bore witness to the Triangle shirt factory fire. It was somehow a mixture of lecture and comedy monologue. We laughed. We learned. We listened to rock and roll. And we developed an interest in history and government that made us better citizens. We knew that all students should have a Mr. Jones to teach them, but there was just the one.
Ronald Kincaid Jones was born in Oxnard, California on July 26, 1933, to Charles and Geneva Jones of Hermosa Beach. His father was superintendent of schools; his mother, a homemaker. At the age of fifteen, tall for his age, he began sneaking into Santa Anita racetrack to watch the thoroughbreds run, fostering a lifelong passion for the sport. He graduated from Whittier College, then served two years in the US Army in Alaska as the Korean War was winding down; he received his teaching degree from his beloved UCLA. In 1961, lucky for all of us who knew him, he discovered Coronado, and the students of CHS soon discovered him.
Ron’s home was a gathering place. Teachers and ex-students got together for Friday afternoon darts, for bridge, for Charger games, for scrabble, for the occasional gourmet meal. The liquor flowed, the conversation was eclectic, varying from mundane to profound, and sometimes heated, but always entertaining.
The highlight each year came on the first Saturday in May, when RK held his annual Kentucky Derby party, attended by his colleagues, his ex-students and their families. For some of us, it was a mini-reunion. There were horseshoes and other games. He had in-house betting. We tasted our first mint juleps. We designated drivers.
When it came, Ron’s decline thankfully was short. His mind and body began to fail in the summer. As he neared the end, he declined both medication and nutrition. Fittingly, on the morning of November 3rd, as his beloved thoroughbreds ran at Del Mar on his favorite weekend of the year, Breeder’s Cup, Ron Jones passed quietly into history. He is survived by his friends and by his teaching legacy.
A lovely tribute for a lovely man!