Dr. Kevin Rice Jones

Groton - The naturally-selected DNA of Dr. Kevin Rice Jones, 85, Groton has run its course.

Born Dec. 24, 1923, in Schenectady, N.Y. to Laurence D. and Irma Rice Jones, Dr. Jones died March 20, 2009.

Jones joined the Navy in 1942, and became a pilot, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He survived training, including crashing an airplane into Lake Washington near Seattle. He went on to hunt German U-boats in the Atlantic while assigned to the carrier USS Bogue.

After the war he married JoAnn (Pete) Peterson on June 11, 1945. They were married for 63 years and she survives him, along with a daughter and son-in-law, Marcia and Jeff Dysart of Baltimore, Md.; son and daughter-in-law, Lauren and Vivien Jones of Providence, R.I.; son and daughter-in-law, Brock and Jude Summerjones of Columbia, Mo. and Whitney Jones of San Francisco, Calif. Other survivors are grandchildren, Dylan, Hayden and Carson Jones originally from Providence, and Amalia and Bronwen Jones of San Francisco.

Another son, Griffith, preceded him in death.

Jones received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. He worked for a time in Oak Ridge, Tenn. on a project to create a nuclear airplane, but left when it became evident that the project would fail. He continued his education and received a Ph.D in Physics from the University of Kansas. He taught Petroleum Engineering at KU from 1957 to 1966, except one year that he spent as a Fulbright Scholar in Medellin, Colombia. After that he held positions as director of, or working in, computing departments at North Carolina State University (Raleigh), for Perkin Elmer Corporation while living in Ridgefield at the University of Delaware (Newark), and for the Naval Underwater Systems Center, New London. He resigned from NUSC in the late 1970s to build and manage the SPOK! Racquetball Club with Pete for several years. In the early 1980s, Jones did computer programming and consulting on a part-time basis.

With nicknames from his Navy days "Available Jones", family "Ol' Bear" and locally "KJ, KR", Jones loved sailing, playing (and all things) tennis, the UCONN women's basketball team, his tools and gadgets, skiing, playing bridge and poker, computing, his annual vacations to visit beloved friends in Westport, N.Y., reading, and living life in a way that defies description. Among his many memorable experiences, jumping off a roof onto a trampoline, several ocean sailing trips, being on a Selma march with Dr. Martin Luther King, constructing a 90-pound ping-pong table, building a slot-car racetrack, coaching volleyball at the University of Kansas (and recruiting Wilt Chamberlain), creating a "teaching machine," being nationally ranked for his age-group in racquetball, and buying an ultralight plane at age 82. A member of Mensa, Jones was a lifelong defender of going barefoot, a habit begun as a child in idyllic times on a Lake George, N.Y. island.

A memorial service will be held at a later date.

Contributions in his honor may be sent to Experimental Aircraft Association, Chapter 27, c/o Bill Jagoda, 43 Derby Rd., Rockfall, CT 06473.