Billie M Jones

HONESDALE, PA - Billie M. Jones, who was born in Weir in 1924 and lived there until 1948, died in Honesdale, PA on September 18, 2019. She was 95 years old. She and her
husband, Hugh N. Jones, had been married for 71 years.
Ms. Jones was the daughter of William R. and Eva M. Hamilton, the
granddaughter of James and Jessie Hamilton, and the great granddaughter of
William Sr. and Margaret Hamilton, all of them active in the development of
coal mining interests in Cherokee and Crawford counties. She was a member
of the Miners Hall and Museum in Franklin and contributed to the Miners Park
in Pittsburg.
In 1942, during World War II and just out of high school, she worked on a
production line, first making detonators for 150mm anti-aircraft shells and
then as an administrative clerk compiling reports from multiple production
lines in three buildings of a Johns-Hopkins War Production Plant located near
Parsons. After a year, she attended the William Allen White School of
Journalism at the University of Kansas and was graduated in 1947. In 1945
and 1946, during summer vacations, she worked as a reporter for the
Pittsburg Headlight and Pittsburg Sun when they were separate morning and
evening papers.
In 1948 she received an M.S. degree from Northwestern University in
Evanston, IL and for the next two years was a reporter for the Metropolitan
Section of the Chicago Tribune. In 1950 she retired to raise a family but she
continued to do free lance writing and editing. From 1966 to 1968 she
worked as Associate Editor of the Scarsdale, Inquirer, a weekly New York
weekly newspaper, and from 1969 to 1971 was a Public Information Officer
for the Center for Urban Education in New York City. After receiving teaching
and supervising credentials from the City College of New York she began her
25 years of work as a teacher and administrator for the New York City public
schools.
Beside her husband, survivors include her daughter, Dr. Rebecca M. Jones and
her husband William W. Jones, Jeffrey H. Jones and Scott H. Jones and his wife
Susan Sterman-Jones, and grandchildren Owen, Tyler, Jackson, and Ruby
Jones, brother, Jim T. Hamilton of Pittsburg, KS, a niece Beth Gorman of
Pittsburg, and two nephews, Bill Hamilton of Weir, and John Hamilton of
Hickory, NC.