LYMAN M. JONES III - a life

Lyman M. Jones III, newspaper man, union organizer, student of history, singer, poet and lover of literature, died July 14th (Bastille Day) in Austin. A resident of Dripping Springs, Texas, he was 73.

Born December 7, 1919, in Towanda, Pennsylvania, he was the eldest son of Earl William and Ethel Peet Jones. His youth, spent largely in central New York state, nurtured what became a lifelong love of the natural world. He was an excellent scholar, superior swimmer and amateur boxer. He was graduated from high school in Elmira, New York, while working a full-time night job in a silk mill sweat shop. The country was in throes of the Great Depression and after completing high school, Lyman joined Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, working on projects in New York’s state and local parks. His wages, sent home to his mother, comprised the only income for his family that year.

Lyman studied literature at Ithaca College (New York), where he also worked as a stagehand in dramatic productions. He left college to enlist in the Army Infantry soon after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on his 22nd birthday. He first saw action as a 1st Lieutenant in the North Africa campaign and in Italy. After recuperating from minor wounds suffered in those battles, he took part in the D-Day landing at Normandy,1944. While leading a reconnaissance mission during the battle for Achaen, Lyman was taken prisoner by the Germans. He was held in a Nazi prison camp in Poland for more than a year, listed as missing in action and presumed dead.

It is a captured soldier’s duty to attempt escape. To fulfill this obligation and a personal imperative to maintain his sanity, Lyman escaped and was recaptured four times before making a fifth successful attempt. He hiked eastward across Poland to the Black Sea where the advancing Russian forces helped him board a British ship traveling to Istanbul. From there, he returned to the United States.

In the late 1940’s Lyman worked as a public information specialist for Cornell University in Elmira, where he interviewed such notables as Linus Puling and T.S. Elliot. There he met Claire Banister of Rocksprings, Texas, who worked for a local radio station. They married in 1949 and moved to Honolulu, where Lyman worked as the Pacific correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. In 1950, the couple moved to Austin, where Lyman worked the city desk and later the police and capitol beats for the Austin-American Statesman. He was one of a new breed of investigative reporter, utterly fearless and aggressive in pursuit of the truth.

In the early 1950’s, Lyman was one-half of the original two-man news team at KTBC-TV, Austin’s first television station, where he reported, wrote and anchored the news broadcasts.

Over the years his writing career included free-lance work for the many publications including the New Republic, The Progressive, and the New York Times Book Review. He also worked as a reporter for newspapers in Texas, New Mexico, and California. He edited a number of small town weeklies, including the Lincoln County News (Carrizozo, New Mexico) the Weslaco Mid-Valley News (Weslaco, Texas) and the Highlander (marble Falls, Texas), which he and his wife Claire, founded in 1959. He was also associate editor of The Texas Observer in the late 1950’s and a long-time contributing editor for that publication. He won numerous awards for his writing and editing.

Through his life, Lyman was guided and motivated by a reverence for this country’s founding principles as expressed in the Bill of Rights. He believed that a free press, as guaranteed in the First Amendment, is vital to the protection of every other basic human right – and must be zealously guarded. He was relentless in a life-battle against the forces of ignorance and oppression. These were the ideals that drove his involvement with politics and the labor movement.

Lyman served as campaign manager for Ralph Yarborough in his bid for the governorship and his successful race for the U.S. Senate in 1956. He wrote, consulted and did advanced publicity work for many other candidates who he hoped would further his ideals. As publics relations director the Texas AFL-CIO in the early 1060’s he worked with the Committee on Political Education (COPE) and edited the AFL-CIO News.

At a memorial service for fellow Observer editor, Bill Brammer in 1978, Lyman was re-acquainted with Virginia Titus, whom he married in 1979. In 1983, Lyman and Virginia moved to the Jones’ one-acre ranch in Dripping Springs, where they managed “three head of dog, one head of cat, and one head of horse.”

In addition to this Wife, Virginia, Lyman is survived by his mother, Ethel Peet Jones of Worthington, Ohio, brothers, Earl William Jones of Medford, Oregon, and Donald Lee Jones of Worthington, Ohio, uncle, Gerald Leon Peet of Emmaus, Pennsylvania, son Lyman Morgan Jones IV, of Austin, daughter, Gwyneth Claire Jones and husband Quinn Martin, of Austin, grandchildren, Meredith Eloise Jones, Lyman Morgan Jones V, Adrian Claire Martin, and Asa Quinten Martin all of Austin; and numerous nieces and nephews.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that memorial contributions be made to the Newspaper Guild’s Leuchter Fund, the United Farm Workers, or the social organization of your choice.

In accordance with his wishes, Lyman was cremated and private family ceremony will be held at a later date. Friends will gather to remember him at 3:30 PM Sunday, July 18th, at his daughter’s home 1404 W 11th Street.

 IF

 If I were not Welsh,
I’d rather be
any worm in
a wild apple tree.

I’m angry,
I’m tired of fools –
hell, I’m Welsh.
And you are…?

The great Celts of Wales
are men that God made mad.
All their wars are merry,
All their songs are sad. 

- Lyman Jones, 1983