Instructions

to the Reader: a) follow the pace of the words, b) project, and c) do not substitute nor condense any part of this text.
Lessel R. Jones: A Grandson's View by Patrick Timmons QEPD: Born October 1920, died 9 March 2012 The best way for me to celebrate my grandfather Lessel R. Jones is to begin by thanking all of you who are assembled here today. I do not know many of you, and some of you will remember me from long ago as an awkward grandson held in high esteem by my loving grandfather. You have accompanied my grandfather over the past years, as his friends, as his community, as those who shared friendly love between each other, offered support, gave rides in cars, and confronted the world's troubles. Some of the people I am referring to have already passed, and some of those of you who are here he knew for a long time, others of you are more recent friends, forged in a time and place much different to the trajectory my grandfather plowed across the twentieth century with my grandmother, his wife, Doreen Jones. And like my grandmother to him, you have also all been extremely kind, no matter how long you knew him. The departure, his passing strikes me as too soon, somebody who lives thousands of miles from Beaminster, Dorset and the West Country, but I can feel your love for him, just as surely as you must know that in his own sometimes strange, often clumsy way, he loved us all, everyone of us.

It matters greatly to me that you all know just how much he appreciated your friendly companionship. He used to report by telephone and letter on his interactions with you -- a practice that began in 1996 when I left England for Japan, and continued until he could no longer see to write. He spoke of tea here or there, lunch there or here, trip to the coast, possibly, but more likely a good walk around Beaminster's hills with one or many of you, on any day of the week, such was the liberty of his retirement. It seems to me that many

Instructions to the Reader: a) follow the pace of the words, b) project, and c) do not substitute nor condense any part of this text.
people fade into their retirement and disappear from the control of their lives. But L. R. Jones was not that man. He engaged constantly with the world, he engaged you, and this interaction shaped his insatiable curiosity. Not so much for things, or even knowledge gained through literate ideas, but for experiences with all their impressive sensations. Because of your bond, your willingness to travel with him on his journey, which was also your journeys, that I want to say again how deeply thankful I am that you have helped him to maintain an identity where others fade.

I do not have enough time to tell you all I need to say about what my grandfather has meant to me, and I wrote a more formal valedictory listing his accomplishments, his service in the war, his commuting daily for more than 30 years to London. I won't go on about that but instead, I want to make sure that you know that being his grandson was, and will forever be, a transformative experience. L. R. Jones was not a famous man but he is and will always be a celebrated man as long as we carry the memory of what being with him was like, of what his unceasing spirit enabled. For my part, I will carry his sheer love of walking through beautiful open spaces, or of him constantly reminding me, because I had once told him, that I thought looking at clouds in the sky was liberating. I will carry with me, until I myself die, the silhouette of a distant L. R. Jones atop the pyramids outside of Mexico City. I will never forget the pride I felt when he showed me that, even in his early 80s, he could still climb hundreds of steps of an Aztec pyramid under a hot sun and a high altitude to get a fantastic view so that he could take one of his many pictures with his trusty camera.

To us, alas, L. R. Jones is no longer even a distant shape on the outline of a

Instructions to the Reader: a) follow the pace of the words, b) project, and c) do not substitute nor condense any part of this text.
Mexican pyramid. He has gone, and his future with it. So, too, these words of mine, eulogizing my grandfather and his relationship to you, will disappear into a metaphorical fog. So believe me and hear me when I say that I am grateful not just for him, but for you, too. Thank you for coming to celebrate his life; thank you for living his life with him. Never forget our family's gratitude to you, for being for thirty years in Beaminster, his family, his community, and his pride.

Let me conclude by offering you an image of L. R. Jones at birthday parties, the type you give to grandchildren who are still very young. After the obligatory Happy Birthday Song my grandfather always used to celebrate an extra year of me or my brother's lives with a Hip, Hip, Hurray, Hurray, Hurray, and then a Hes a Jolly Good Fellow. It was the way he celebrated the movement forward. It was never tinged with sadness and always shouted with deep conviction. So, as I bid you farewell and offer you my love and gratitude, would one of you please be kind enough to do me the sheer privilege of shouting now a series of hips and hurrays to honor the life and example of Les Jones, a truly marvelous grandfather...