Amherst, Kathleen Jones was born November 20th, 1919, in Bebbington, Cheshire (UK), in the middle of the reign of George V. It was the year after the Great War, just after women over 30 were given the vote in Great Britain. When Kathleen was three, Ireland became independent, and when she was nine, universal suffrage for women was introduced. Kathleen attended Rock Ferry Convent High School in Bebbington, and graduated at age 17, in 1936. That year the Queen Mary sailed from Southampton to New York in a record 4 days and the Spanish civil war began. Kathleen was glad she could get a job as a local librarian (she really wanted to be a journalist – but there were few opportunities for women). When she was 20 in 1939, the UK declared war on Germany. She met Robert Jones that year at a tennis club and they were married in 1940, before he was due to be shipped to Norway. Between 1940-45, during the war, Kathleen worked in Air Raid Control (the ARC) and in 1943 when she was 24, had her first child, Neil.

After the war ended, she traveled with her husband, Bob, who was training teachers, to Staffordshire, Wiltshire and Leicestershire. Her passion for drama was born at this time, and both she and Bob were active in the community center movement. At 34 in 1953, she had a second son, Stephen, born the same year that Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing conquered Everest. The Queen was crowned that year and Watson and Crick discovered the double helix in Cambridge, just 30 miles from where she lived.

In 1953, Kathleen moved to Harlow Newtown, and founded with her husband a new community center. Her interest in drama blossomed, and together with Bob, she established the first amateur drama group in the town in 1954. In 1958, she went to Trent Park College, and specialized in Drama. In 1962, now 43, she went with six other women to the Middle East in search of a Sheikh who had visited Harlow, and after her six month adventure, resumed her teaching career as an elementary school teacher – interspersed with a job as drama advisor in the East End of London. Among her many theater productions was The House of Bernarda Alba, Sergeant Musgrave’s Dance, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Knight of the Burning Pestle, Under Milk Wood, The Crucible, and Bernard Shaw’s St Joan.

She was an avid traveler and sailor, crossing the English Channel in a small sailing boat three times, and exploring the Mediterranean by sail.

Kathleen retired in 1979, and in 1980 her first grandson, Lawrence, was born. In 1987, came the birth of her second grandson, Ilya. She was a fabulous grandmother, always curious, loving, and imaginative. In 1996 Kathleen’s husband of 56 years died, and Kathleen came to the United States to live with her son, Stephen, daughter-in-law, Marina, and her grandchildren. She continued to be active in Amherst, attending classes, making pots, attending her grandson’s concerts in New York, traveling when she could to Europe, and making new friends. She will be sorely missed by her family, and by her neighbors and friends around the world.