Despite challenges, 95-year-old Minnesota Air Force veteran remains steadfast in faith
At 95, Luther Neil Wilson Jones knows the power of choice.
"I had so many different encounters and moved to so many different directions," he said.
It's how a rural farm boy from Tennessee ended up in the Air Force.
"I wanted to be a mortician, so I figured that was a good way that I would go to finish that education," Jones said.
Jones grew up in Sweetwater, Tennesee, where life on the farm was hard yet joyful.
After graduation, he had a choice.
"You had recruiters that would come by campus and paint the pretty picture to you how easy it was for you to finish your education with the GI Bill of Rights and, oh what a wonderful opportunity it would be for you," Jones said.
He took the opportunity at 18 years old. But in the 1940s, he was in a segregated unit.
"But it was a hidden thing. Even your insignia on your uniforms were different," Jones said.
Beyond the U.S., his service took him to Guam and Japan, where his flight squad was in for a shake-up.
"This is the graduation photograph of the last segregated Air Force Flight," Jones said, pointing to an old photograph. "That's the first time I was ever housed with White troops."
It wouldn't be until he was stationed at Fort Snelling in St. Paul that another choice — to dine at the Book T. Cafe — would lead Jones to a wife and, later, four children.
"Just like it happened yesterday that I went in and introduced myself," he said. "I said, 'I would like a Miller High Life and you along with me while I consume it.'"
Now, there are only memories left of the Booker T. Cafe — just one of many businesses in St. Paul's Rondo neighborhood, the heart of the Black community knocked out in the late 1950s to make room for Interstate 94. It left many families like Jones' without a place to call home.
"That's where history is, but whole side — that one side of the street — turned into the freeway. And then that's when we all had to go back to the east side, but we managed to come through it," he said.
He's faced challenges and changes more than most, but throughout it all, Jones made the choice to remain steadfast in his faith.
"I have been blessed. Could have changed many times, but I have no qualms. I'm perfectly all right," he said.
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