Mount Vernon Nursing & Rehabilitation Center in Alexandria
Mrs. Jones was born in 1929 in Houston, Texas. Her mother Odessa Broussard raised her to have a wonderful work ethic along with strong family values. She married her husband David Jones in 1945. She attended Prairie View University, which was the first state-supported college in Texas for African-Americans. She excelled at her studies, but left college in 1947 when she learned that she had a baby on the way.
Jones was blessed with three daughters in the next five years. When her girls were five, three and one years old, she was stricken with polio. She spent the next six months in an Iron Lung—the 800 pound iron cylinder with just her head sticking out. Her husband had a job in California and her girls lived with her sisters.
Although she was partially paralyzed, Mrs. Jones left treatment early to be reunited with her girls. The only housing available to her was a two story public housing apartment with many steps. Her daughter Cheryl remembers her sitting on the steps and going up one step at a time on her bottom; she said she will never forget the sound of her mother’s body hitting that hard cement. Mrs. Jones’s strength and courage inspired her children, who have gone on to earn their own college degrees and have successful careers and families of their own.