By Teddy Allen
He’s been the Jones you couldn’t keep up with, a humble and gentle giant, a boy who rubbed dirt on childhood poverty and loss and shook it off and held close to family and kept going.
This week he finished his race, magnificent and colorful to say the least, two months shy of 100 and knocking on the door of 80 years of marriage to his sweetheart since junior high.
Nice work if you can get it.
From his birth in Arcadia at Christmastime 1924 to his move down the road to Ruston at age 5 to his passing at home on our most recent fall football Saturday morning, Dub Jones left with his priceless family and multitude of friends a legacy of friendship and faith, callouses and caring, big strides and big smiles, all from a big heart.
William Augustus “Dub” Jones. The Dub from the “W” in “William.”
In athletics, a W stands for a win. A dub.
Or in this case, a Dub. Lincoln Parish’s Dub.
Our Dub.
Classic.
If we hadn’t known he was real, we’d have bet he was a mistake of nature. Had to be.
A natural athlete at 6-2 and a sleek, strong 202 in his prime. On football fields, even in ankle boots and a leather helmet, he ran with the grace of a deer, the purpose of a soldier, the spirit of the wind.
A quick web search will get you all the football stories you want, lengthy ones because he was so good and so ahead of his time. Stories in everything from the Lincoln Parish Journal to Sports Illustrated to the New York Times to the NFL and ESPN sites.
And don’t overlook ClevelandBrowns.com, where he and his pre-Super Bowl teammates made pro football history as the league’s original dynasty.
Look it up. Block out some time, though: it’ll take a while to digest it all, to marvel at it all.
But only us sports nuts know most of that side of the gentleman everyone around here called Mr. Dub. Before TV was invented and before most of us were invented, Dub and those glorious Browns teams were invented. Films of those times are grainy.
But Mr. Dub in real life, well, the most important parts were the same in his older years as they were in his younger ones, and we got to see it — got to see and hear and touch him — in living color.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: you could get him to talking, about anything from bird dogs to Broadway to facemasks to horses to Yogi Berra to quail hunts, about wife Schump or any of their seven kids or the 22 grands or 38 (but who’s counting?) great-grands.
An unrehearsed original is what he was, a joy in khaki pants and a weathered shirt, a hopeful look toward the clouds and an eyes-shut wish as he searched to remember this name or that, this time or that, this story or that story or any of thousands more in a conversation that would make your day.
His was a Forrest Gump-like existence, an extraordinary but simple life, really, at least for the past 65 or so post-All Pro years. Businessman. Worker. Daddy and husband. Authentic from those feet that were fleet to his light-up-the-room smile and turned-white-by-time hair. A man Golden Rule-plated, a kind soul who shared God’s sunshine.
He was the Jones we couldn’t keep up with, but that’s OK. Whether he consciously meant to or not, he knocked it back a gear, and walked at our pace.
If Mr. Dub hadn’t been real, we’d have had to dream him up. Thank God, we didn’t need to.
Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu
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