by Chester Tadeja
Asst. Editorial Director
It was a clear, warm October morning in Georgia back in 1942 when Bennie Jones said goodbye to his mother for the last time. Jones was being drafted into the Army and was uncertain about ever coming back home. Fifty-two years later, Jones is once again about to say goodbye to another group of people.
Jones, who has served ULV for more than 14 years as the dish washer for Davenport Dining Hall, is ready to call it quits next July.
“The arthritis is bothering me some, but I feel okay,” said a healthy Jones. “I’ve been here since 1981 and evidently I’ve liked (what I’m doing), that’s why I’ve stayed as long as I have.”
Jones is seriously considering retirement later next year although his doctors say he is in excellent condition. He is widowed and living alone in a retirement home in Ontario. Jones has two children and has been married three times, but his last wife died in 1982, only a year after he started working with ULV.
“I just can’t keep up with this arthritis,” he said. “It makes it painful for me to keep working. Besides, I’m getting old. I’m overdue.”
Fourteen years ago, Jones started working as a part-time busboy at Davenport before being offered a full-time position washing pots, pans and dishes. He was only 64 back then. At that time, ULV didn’t have “The Spot” and no one knew that alumnus Steve Morgan would become president of ULV.
“He is a pleasant man,” Norm Venables, director of dining services at Davenport Dining Hall, said of Jones. “He’s a familiar face here (at La Verne). He’s an effective worker. We’re going miss him.”
“People always ask me, ‘Why are you still around?’ I tell them that I don’t have anywhere else to go,” said Jones. “I have a car, but when I quit here, I guess I have to quit driving too. I won’t have anywhere to go.”
Every now and then, Jones will get recurring body pains. He believes his retirement will be his remedy to those aches.
“I’m going to relax and do nothing and that’s going to be painful,” said Jones. “It is hard to do nothing when all these years, I’ve always had something to do, somewhere to go. I like it here. I like the young people. I like acting strong (just like) the young people are. I hate to leave this environment, but I can’t carry on forever.
“I’m going to make it alright by myself. I’m a loner. I was raised like this. I was raised alone,” said Jones.
Jones didn’t get to spend very much time with his mother. At an early age, he lived with his relatives in Mississippi while his mom divorced and remarried in a neighboring state. Born in Mississippi, Jones was raised in Alabama and traveled to various states before coming to southern California. He worked various jobs throughout Arizona and Tennessee before being drafted to service at 26. After his service, Jones came to live in northern California before residing with his third wife in West Covina.
“Students like him. (They) have a great rapport with him,” said Venables.
“I like Norm,” said Jones. “He’s a very nice boss.”
One thing Jones regrets is not getting his college degree.
“I regret that,” said Jones. “I’ve regretted not doing what I should have. I got caught up in women and alcohol. Women and alcohol, that’s my secret. Oh man, I was so weak to women. Lots of them controlled me. You shouldn’t let a woman control you.
“Leave drugs alone,” warned Jones. “They’re nothing but trouble. Please, it makes you weaker. Don’t fool with drugs or alcohol. I hate drugs.”
“If I could live life all over again, I would live it differently. I would go back to school. All I have to say to the students is ‘Carry on fellas!’ In (the students) I see what I could have become. I would have liked to have gone to school and graduated. I couldn’t see all the things I wanted to do (when he was as young as students at ULV). Now I see what life could have given me. But now, is a little too late.”
There’s no telling what Jones will do after he retires.
“I like to write. Maybe I’ll play some baseball. But I’m sick of washing dishes. Man, (even after I retire), I’ll think I’ll be washing dishes in my sleep.”
Chester Tadeja
