We usually don’t match being modest to being outspoken. And then along comes Christina Jones.
When asked if she envisioned becoming a volunteer leader for the Houghton-Jones Neighborhood Task Force when she started 30 years ago, she answers with a hearty laugh, “Heck, no!”
But when quizzed further, she acknowledges that she indeed had served as a union steward during her 20-year career downtown at Bell Telephone.
She also was volunteering for Good Neighbors Mission in 1991 when the founder, Hazel Wilson (who since has returned home to rural Mississippi) recruited her for more challenging service.
“I didn’t want to be a couch potato after retiring,” Christina explains, again modestly downplaying the thousands of hours that she has contributed.
She adds, simply, “I like to talk.”
The former Christina Wilson was born in Saginaw in 1934 and attended Crary-Lincoln Elementary and the old Central Junior High. She dropped out of Saginaw High when she married Fred Jones at age 16, achieving a G.E.D years later at Delta College. Her career at Bell, and selling life insurance on the side, started in 1969, after she was well along the patch of raising the couple’s six children. They are Patricia (Qualls), Frederick Jr., Denise, Charles, Angie and Stephanie.
Christina’s home, yard and flowers on South 12th Street are beautifully maintained, a bright light amid the inevitable spread of blight. Still, when Hazel Wilson asked her to join a neighborhood group, she acknowledges she was acquainted with a scant few of them. The Houghton-Jones association (named for the schools, not for her) originally tackled housing and crime issues, similar to many citizens groups in other parts of town.
However, especially near the turn of the millennium, the emphasis shifted to social needs, anything from hosting advisory sessions to AA and NA meetings. Foremost, Houghton-Jones became one of Saginaw’s top providers of youth activities, including an “All Around the Neighborhood” summer program that has featured a pair of gardens operated through the Saginaw County Youth Farm Stand project.
“Everyone wants to maintain a peaceful, serene, eye-appealing community,” Christina says, “but in our case, we have so many issues with children that we have to focus on them. When we see some of them reach the point where they are carrying guns, then we are at risk of a lost generation.”
She remains highly active at age 86. She has given up her first love, bowling, but still plays an occasional nine holes of golf with her “big sister,” Dorothy Harris, now 92. She’s also a regular presence at the Houghton-Jones Center, Johnson at North 10th, which the group recently named in her honor, in spite of her protests.
“But I’m not too good at helping the grandkids with their homework,” she laments, with another of her tell-tale laughs. “Some of the stuff these kids have to learn is beyond me.”
That’s Christina Jones. Always modest, never shy.
