From 1954-58, Dennis Jones was a standout offensive and defensive end for the WVU Mountaineer football team who went on to a 37-year career with the 125^th U.S. Army Reserves, achieving the rank of major general and receiving the distinguished service medal. Jones passed away Jan. 2 and now his widow Trudy - after a whirlwind life with the general – has settled in Bridgeport.

 

“We went from Morgantown to Oklahoma to Germany to Morgantown to Fairmont to New York to St. Louis to Chicago to Alabama and to Tennessee and back to West Virginia,” she said. “We moved 16 times – three times in Germany.”

 

Jones remembers the first time she laid eyes on the man who would become her husband.

 

“I was a junior at Shinnston High School and he was a freshman at WVU. His best friend, Don Burley from Worthington, was dating a good friend of mine and Don said Dennis he should come meet me,” she said.

 

It happened at the upper floor of the Farmerette in Enterprise – a big, open space with a jukebox and dance floor, which was a teenage hangout in the 1950s.

 

“He walked up the flight of stairs to the second floor, turned around and said, ‘I don’t know which one you brought me here to meet tonight, but I’m going to dance with the one in the pink dress,’” Jones said. “I had the pink dress on. We pretty much had an instant attraction. He asked me to dance and the rest is history.”

 

She also went on to attend WVU, always proud to cheer on her boyfriend and his teammates, including Pro Football Hall of Famer Sam Huff.

 

“I was always in the student section,” she said. “The girls dressed up to go to football games back then. We wore suits or dresses, high heels and usually hats.”

 

The Evansdale campus was just beginning to develop and the first medical building was just being constructed. Jones remembers its iconic pillars. She also remembers a walking-only WVU campus – with no personal transit system “PRT.”

 

Dennis Jones graduated with a degree in electrical engineering, but had a passion to serve his country. While attending Monongah High School – where he and his team captured the 1952 state championship – Jones had been appointed by Congressman Harley Staggers to attend West Point. During his final months at MHS, he had attended Braden’s Prep School at West Point, where he planned to play football.

 

“But his dad was ill and his mother talked him into going to the university to be able to help with his dad, so he didn’t go to West Point,” Jones said. “He always had a really strong feeling for the military and went through ROTC at WVU. When he graduated, he took a regular commission and went into the Army. We had married his senior year, when I was still a sophomore.”

 

She had driven him to a recruiting station in Nutter Fort, from where he would travel by bus to Fort Meade, Md. for basic training.

 

“We were sitting in the car and he said he would like to get married when he finished – in six weeks,” she said. “We married the week after he got back, on Aug. 11, 1957. That was indicative of the whirlwind life that was going to be with Dennis Jones.”

 

Back then, military spouses had to attend training, too.

 

“If you weren’t already a lady, you had to learn to be one and how to handle all different situations,” she said. “It was quite an education.”

But perhaps nothing could prepare her for being a 21-year-old mother of a toddler, living in Germany, where her husband – who had been placed in charge of nuclear warheads – was stationed six weeks at a time at the German border.

 

“You had to learn to be very independent and take care of yourself and your child,” she said.

 

The family spent four years in Germany during the Cold War and the building of the Berlin Wall. They lived in Katterbach, Ansbach and just outside of Stuttgart.

 

One returning to the states, the Joneses always made time to return to West Virginia, visiting during holidays and catching a football game whenever possible. And while living around the U.S., including Dennis Jones’ career with Tennessee-based aluminum manufacturer Norandol USA – they often returned to Germany for both vacation and business purposes. Jones retired from Norandol in 2001 as vice president of business development.

 

“Like any marriage, we had our ups and downs. You move and you raise your family, but life with him was very interesting,” Jones said. “We were still dancing – to the tune of any music we could come up with; still dancing in the kitchen and around the house.”

 

The couple had two daughters: Shirley Boushell who lives in Arizona and Melissa Jones of Oregon. They have a granddaughter, Audrey, in California and grandson, Connor, in Massachusetts.

 

But Trudy Jones chose North Central West Virginia for her home.

 

“During my generation – in the 1950s – I grew up in Shinnston during the best of times, when the whole town looked out for you,” she said. “So that’s why I wanted to come back – back to family and where people take care of one another. I have two brothers in Shinnston and lots nieces and nephews, who I love to watch in their sports and activities. That’s what it’s all about.”

 

Jones, who has worked through the years as a florist, columnist and welcome wagon hostess, among other jobs, never finished her degree. Reflecting words of her late husband – that you can succeed at anything if you work hard at it – she decided she just might do that.