RIVER CITY JOURNAL: ERCEL JONES: GIVER OF A LOVE FOR LANGUAGE

The death of Ercel Jones was little noted in your favorite hometown newspaper last week. She was "a retired teacher," the obituary said. Nothing about how her classroom career spanned more than five decades, nor how her prodding and endless enthusiasm for grammar and literature caught the attention of at least a few knuckleheads who later became distinguished journalists, jurists, doctors and educators.

The life and times of Ercel Jones started in tiny Des Arc, which is only a few miles from your favorite hometown. While still a young woman she married a man from Brunot with the romantic name of John Paul Jones. He is remembered mostly unromantically by scores of high school students as the relentless principal whose reputation with a paddle was feared and respected.

One of Ercel's early teaching assignments was at the two-room, white frame schoolhouse called King School, named for your great-great-grandfather (you hope there are enough "greats" there) who was an original settler of Brushy Creek valley. Your mother remembers having Mrs. Jones as a teacher who would ride a horse from Brunot over the hill to Brushy Creek. Your mother later taught at the new King School, a red-granite building just up the road. This was one of many links in the complex rings of life that bind rural hill families together generation after generation.

It was, after all, Ercel's father-in-law, Doc Jones, who was summoned to your grandparents' house after your mother's father was mortally wounded in a hunting accident. Despite his failure to keep Death outside the door, Doc Jones took your grandfather's rifle as payment for his troubles.

Years later, you grew up on a farm near some river-bottom land owned by Doc Jones, who was forever getting stuck in seasonal mudholes during his frequent visits. The corpulent doctor would think nothing of blowing the car's horn until someone showed up with a tractor to extract him from the clutches of the clay muck. And when you were stung by a wasp or had poison ivy, Doc Jones, just passing by, would offer his standard cure: an envelope of little pink pills that your mother promptly threw in the trash. The cure worked, because eventually the swelling and the rash would go away.

Even more years later, you were visiting an antique store not far from your favorite hometown. The store is owned by a woman who remembers like it was yesterday that December day when your grandfather's hunting companions came to her parents' house and asked them to go fetch Doc Jones, because Hans Miller had been shot. You were interested in Wallace Nutting prints, but you spied a leather saddlebag-style doctor's kit with the vials of ancient medicines still intact. This particular bag, she said, had belonged to Doc Jones. It might very well have been the bag he carried to the farmhouse the day your grandfather died. You wanted to buy it because it represented a significant piece of your family's history. She wanted to sell it because she thought she could make a lot of money. As far as you know she still has it.

All of these memories well up because Ercel Jones died, and nothing yet about what made her a great teacher. Not yet. Wait a little longer, because these words limn a truly great life, and you aren't ready, just yet, to let it end.

Whenever Ercel's former students remember her, they always remember a quirky habit she had: While revealing the secrets of a parsed sentence or expounding how poetry evokes emotions, not rhymes, she would unconsciously slip her hand into the open neck of her blouse and adjust the fickle shoulder strap of her brassiere. It is amazing what you recall about someone who has had such a profound effect on so many people.

Was Ercel Jones a great teacher? Let these words on the printed page speak plainly for themselves. She taught you to love language and writing. And to use both carefully. Is there a headstone whose chiseled images could say more?

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.