Necrology

Peter Jones '56

Jul. 4, 1934-Jun. 26, 2007

Peter Jones ’56, whose varied career involved primarily the use of his pen as a writer and editor, was born on July 4, 1934, in Albany, NY. The elder son of Louis C. Jones ’30, longtime director of the New York State Historical Association and a noted authority on American folk culture, and the former Hazel Williams, Pete Jones grew up in Cooperstown, where he was graduated from Cooperstown Central High School. He became an enthusiastic sailor at a young age, plying the waters of Otsego Lake, and once crewed in one of the America’s Cup races. He followed his father to Hamilton in 1952, joined Theta Delta Chi, and soon found his niche in student publications. Beginning with The Spectator in his freshman year, he went on from the Continental to The Hamiltonian, becoming its editor-in-chief in his senior year. He served on the Publications Board and was elected to the journalism honorary Pi Delta Upsilon. He also served on the student admissions committee and was a member of the sailing team and bowling club. An enlivener of many a house party, he overcame academic challenges, especially encounters with French, to earn his diploma in 1956.

Peter Jones thereafter entered the field of advertising as a copywriter, and was employed by four agencies in four years, all of which went out of business, as he later recalled. There followed a long period of free-lance multimedia work. While residing in Brooklyn and later in Trenton Falls, NY, he wrote screenplays for television and films as well as educational materials and business show scripts and catalogues. During the 1960s he was part owner and vice president for a time of Electronic History, Inc., an educational audiovisual company. Typical of the many “do-it-yourself” booklets he composed over the years, based upon his own bittersweet experiences as a house owner and restorer, was Electric Repair Made Easy. One of his educational film strips, on President Theodore Roosevelt, won for him a blue ribbon at the American Film Festival in 1966. Of all his writings, however, he took greatest pride in Rebel in the Night, a Revolutionary War novel, which took 10 years and encountered numerous rejection slips before its publication in 1971.

Peter Jones, whose later employment included technical writer and editor for Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, moved to that state some 20 years ago. Last year, he took up residence in Red Bank, where he died on June 26, 2007. A loyal alumnus, he is survived by his companion, Elaine Smith, and a son, Christopher Jones, born of his marriage, in 1960, to Pamela Siddall-Goertzen. Also surviving are a granddaughter as well as his brother, David Jones, and sister, Carol Loomis.

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