| Dr. James P. Jones |
Full Name: James Pickett Jones, Jr.
Born: June 17, 1931, Jacksonville, Fla.
Died: June 20, 2020, Tallahassee, Fla.
Legacy Bricks: Legacy Walk Map Link
1995 Moore-Stone Award HOF - Loc 64
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| FSU Career |
| Moore-Stone Award | |
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| Member of the FSU Hall of Fame |
| Elected into the FSU Hall of Fame in 1995 |
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For 25 of 38 years at Florida State University, Jim Jones has been deeply involved with the athletic program. Through his involvement on numerous boards and committees, Jones was a key figure in
bringing FSU athletics to the next level. Jones had served on the Athletic Board for 19 years and was the board's chair and faculty representative to the NCAA from 1980-84. Year after year Jones served on selection committees to fill top level positions within the Athletic Department. The most valuable service to FSU in the area may have been in 1975 when he was a member of the committee which named Bobby Bowden head football coach. Jones was also involved in the selection of baseball coaches Dick Howser and Mike Martin. In addition to being a historian of the Civil War and World War II, Jim Jones has been a student of Seminole football. He published FSU One Time: A History of Seminole Football in 1973; FSU One Time: The Bowden Years in 1984 and Guts and Glory: The Gators and The Seminoles in 1993. In 1991 he was awarded the permanent designation, Distinguished Teaching Professor. Obituary for James P. Jones Published by the History Department at Florida State University, history.fsu.edu, 06/20/2020 It is with profound sadness that the FSU history department shares the news that our dear friend and colleague James P. Jones has died. For those of you who didn't have the great good fortune to know Jim, he was a faculty member in the FSU History Department for 57 years, and retired in 2014 aged 82. Jim was by far the most popular and celebrated teacher the department has ever knownhe enthralled, literally, generations of students with his encyclopedic knowledge of his subject matter, his searing wit, and his liberal use of the f-bomb. Jim used to laugh that students would approach him to say that he'd taught their parents, to which Jim would reply, "and how's your grandmother/grandfather, whom I also taught." He'd had a few health setbacks in recent weeks, but had been trundling on. Last Friday friends took him out for oysters. A life-long Cardinals fan, the only thing he'd wanted more than to see the defeat of Donald Trump, was for the Cardinals to reclaim the World Series Crown. We will all miss him so very much. The late Gerald Ensley, a former student and admirer of Jim's, wrote this tribute for the Tallahassee Democrat to mark Jim's retirement: FSU legend Jim Jones set to retire Published Apr. 20, 2014 T.K. Wetherell likes to tell the story about a student he talked to when he was president at Florida State University. He asked what was her favorite class. She said it was a history class she was taking from legendary professor Jim Jones. Wetherell asked the student why she was taking the class. The student said: "Because my grandfather said it was his favorite class!" Jim Jones loves that story and is proud of what it represents. On Thursday, Jones will teach the last class of his 57th year on the FSU faculty and officially retire. An avid, lifelong baseball fan not to mention high school athlete who played intramural softball at FSU until he was 68 Jones has kept track of his stats: He has taught 21,290 students at FSU. He has won nine FSU teaching awards and is up for a 10th this semester ("I'd love to go out on double figures"). He has taught his famed Civil War class 93 times ("The South loses every time") and his nearly as famous World War II class 47 times. He is currently tied with Louis Galambos of Johns Hopkins University and Seymour Drescher of the University of Pittsburgh as the nation's longest-serving university history professors. He is second in FSU faculty history to retired music professor Tommie Wright, who served 59 years (1949-2008). Jones has written six books on the Civil War and three books on sports including the seminal "FSU One Time," the 1973 book that laid the foundation for all FSU football history books that followed. But it is not the stats Jones will think of this week. It will be the students. "I'll miss the relationship with the damn students," said Jones, who has never been afraid to drop an F-bomb in class. "They are good people and they really want to join me in what we're doing and figure out what the hell happened (in history)." Jones, who turns 83 in June, would love to teach forever. As a professor emeritus, he will continue to teach one class a year. But the ravages of age, notably a diabetes condition that has made walking difficult, have persuaded him to step down from full-time teaching. Which leaves a void at FSU. "There is no single faculty member for whom this department is more dependent on for our public face than Jim Jones," said Ed Gray, chair of FSU's history department. "He is an institution. Our identity among alumni is hugely owing to Jim's infectious teaching gifts and presence in the classroom." Jones always has gone the extra mile for students. In 1963, he successfully lobbied to keep future rock star Jim Morrison from being expelled after Morrison was arrested for vandalism. In the 1960s and 1970s, he joined other faculty members in raising bail money for FSU students jailed for civil rights and anti-war protests. One time a student homecoming skit with blue language offended a potential donor, the late actress Helen Hayes, who walked out in a huff. "The administration was moving heaven and earth to punish the students," said former FSU history professor David Ammerman. "But Jim went to bat for the kids (and prevented punishment), which was 100 percent the right thing to do." Jones has taught a raft of famous FSU students over the years: football players Burt Reynolds, Kim Hammond, Ron Sellers, Fred Biletnikoff and T.K. Wetherell, as well as future U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, future Maryland Gov. Parris Glendenning and future Florida Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp. No small part of Jones' appeal is his classroom performances. He has visited every major Civil War battlefield and most World War II battlefields in Europe. He is a voracious reader, with a wide range of interests. Two weeks ago, as he guided his Civil War class through Sherman's capture of Atlanta, he shared sports trivia (first baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis was so named because his father fought in the Battle of Kenesaw Mountain), movie references (matching events in 1864 to scenes in "Gone With The Wind") and treated students to his singing of "Marching Through Georgia." "It was a show to go to Jones' class," said Wetherell, who took several Jones classes in the 1960s. "It was tough to get in, nobody skipped, it was just a cool class and he was a cool guy. He was so knowledgeable and made it so real, it was just fantastic." Yet it is Jones' commitment to students that they remember most. Long after it fell from vogue, he continued to host students in his home. He regularly takes two or three grad students on his trips to Civil War battlefields. He plops down often to offer his two cents during student gabfests. He is famous for lending students a sympathetic ear for personal problems. He comes to class 10 minutes early, just so students can shoot the breeze with him about whatever is on their mind. He writes dozens of letters of recommendation every year for former students. Three years ago, students put his photo on T-shirts they sold to raise money for the graduate student association. "Fifty-seven years later, he still cares," said grad student Richard Soash. "He still reads every word of your term paper. He doesn't skimp on office hours. He's invested in us and we feel like we're a certain part of his life." Jones will tell you it was the way he was taught to be a college professor an old-school leaning that befits a man who got his first computer just two years ago. Jones earned all three of his degrees at the University of Florida, where he was schooled in the ways of teaching by legendary professors such as William Baringer and Bill Carleton. "Am I imitating William Baringer? Am I imitating Wild Bill Carleton, who was an absolutely fantastic teacher? Yeah," Jones said. "I'm interested in not only the three months I have (students) in class but where they're going, what they're going to do." From Sumter to civil rights James Pickett Jones Jr. the middle name that of a Confederate general was born June 17, 1931 in Jacksonville. His father was a railroad engineer, his mother suffered tuberculosis when she was pregnant with him. Jones became an only child in a very tight-knit trio. His mother, Clare, was a self-taught aficionado of literature and music and opera. She forced him to sit with her every Saturday afternoon as she listened to the radio broadcast of the New York Metropolitan Opera. Of course, he hated it at first. But he eventually came to love opera and classical music. He now takes frequent trips to New York to indulge both passions and annually pays $7,500 for a membership in his mother's name to the Met. His father, Pick, a native of Oklahoma, was a fan of baseball and particularly the St. Louis Cardinals. He and his son attended innumerable minor league baseball games in Jacksonville where Jones was introduced to the talents of an up and coming Boston Braves outfielder named Hank Aaron. At 10, his father taught him how to read box scores, which remains a passion 73 years later. For several summers, father and son rode the train to St. Louis to watch the Cardinals play. "My mother gave me opera, my father gave me sports," said Jones, who has taught an annual senior seminar, "Sports in America," for 15 years. They also gave him his politics which are decidedly liberal. Both his parents abhorred the racism of the South and taught him it was wrong. The first time his mother heard him use the N-word, she "beat the hell out of me with a branch from a flowering pomegranate bush (again, he remembers stuff like this)." "In Jacksonville of the 1930s and 1940s, we were about the only liberals," Jones said. "It made us outcasts. But it didn't stop us one bit." Yet his mother was from an Old South family: Two great grandfathers fought for the Confederacy. More importantly, his great grandmother, Sally Munnerlyn, lived her last years with Jones and his parents. Munnerlyn grew up in Charleston and was 12 years old when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter to start the Civil War. From her, Jones acquired his interest in the Civil War. "I'd ask her, What was it like? What did it sound like? Did you have to go to school that day?' " Jones said. "I would grill her so much my mother would make me stop. She was 96 and blind by that time. But she loved to talk about it." Yet for all that Southern background, he and his parents were pro-Union in a book-filled house where, "We actually read and talked about the Civil War." And he remained so forever: All six of his Civil War books are about Union generals and issues. "The L' name we rallied to in my family was Lincoln, not Lee," Jones said. "A lot of this had to do with civil rights. I was already pro-Union, then the civil rights movement came along and made me a lot more pro-Union." No bureaucrat, just a great teacher Jim Jones taught his first class at FSU on Sept. 19, 1957 (we told you he keeps track of these things). He had completed his bachelor's and master's degrees and all but his dissertation for his doctorate at UF. But he was having trouble finding a job. Then on a Sunday, as he sat outside his Gainesville home washing his daughter's diapers, his major professor, Baringer, came driving up ("I'd never seen him driving so fast") to breathlessly announce FSU suddenly had an opening for someone to teach American history and Western civilization courses. Jones drove to Tallahassee the next day, spent a few minutes talking with the chair of the history department and without having published a thing or even going through a formal interview, he was hired as a "temporary acting instructor." "Can there be any more impermanent a title?" he laughed. The post threatened to be brief. In those days, the FSU history department permitted only one faculty member per university of their Ph.D., and only one faculty member per specialty. But at the end of Jones' first year, the only full-time UF graduate left for another university, as did the only Civil War specialist. Jones was hired full-time and two years later, after finishing his dissertation, he was granted tenure. "I thought sooner or later, I'd at least look for another job," he said. "but I liked FSU." (His luck with another institution has not been as sublime: Jones has been married and divorced four times, and single for 27 years. On the plus side, his daughter from his first marriage, Nancy Jones, a state worker, has been his battlefield traveling companion for decades.) Despite his renown as a teacher, Jones has served plenty of time in administrative roles. He spent 17 years on the FSU Athletics Council (1973-1990), including five years as chair during which time he was FSU's NCAA representative. He was chair of the FSU history department for seven years (1981-1988). He sparred occasionally with other administrators. He was a staunch opponent of the NCAA's approval of Thursday night football games ("If you don't think college football interferes with academics, you're crazy as hell"). He clashed with former Arts & Sciences dean/Provost Larry Abele about Abele's authority to appoint a new chair for the history department. "He told me once if something has to be in on the 10th, by the 11th you don't have to worry about it anymore," Ammerman said. "That summarizes his attitude toward the bureaucratic structure. He was not big on authority." Of course, Jones' teaching made up for any hurt feelings. In the 1990s, Abele instituted a new student rating of teachers. Those who got 30 percent poor ratings were referred to their department chair for evaluation; those who got 90 percent excellent reviews got a note of praise from Abele. Jones was consistently among the one percent of 1,500 faculty members receiving 90 percent excellent ratings. "Jim Jones got a lot of those notes from me," Abele said. "90 percent was a pretty big bar to get over, but he sometimes got two (notes) a year." Even now, "RateMyProfessor.com" is filled with comments about Jones such as, "greatest teacher in the world," "No professor has ever affected me so profoundly," and "His teaching may stop but his influence on people will never end." Amanda Hammond Rapp would agree. Rapp graduated from FSU in 2000, and FSU law school in 2003. She took a half dozen classes from Jones and he oversaw her honors thesis. She's also the daughter of former FSU star quarterback Kim Hammond, a retired circuit judge in Volusia County, and the former Jan Dunn who began dating after meeting in Jones' class. "I absolutely give (Jones) credit for my being born," Rapp said with a chuckle. "As a teacher, I liked him immediately; he could make anything in history sound exciting. Then when I got to know him, I found he was interested in me as an individual. He took an interest in my academics and in my life. "I don't believe I ever had another teacher like
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| FSU Statistics |
In retirement, Jim continued to hold forth to rooms of adoring youngsters, but those youngsters were only a little younger than he. He taught
classes on American politics, Watergate, the Civil War, and other subjects for the Osher Life-Long Learning Institute and those classes were so popular the OLLI staff had to find larger venues. He was
doing this up until the Covid crisis hit.