Constance Carey Jones

Constance "Connie" Carey Jones was born April 26, 1933, in Scranton, PA - "me and Joe Biden" - under a waxing crescent moon. It was the start of FDR's first of four terms. "I only lived there a year, because the front of the house caved in from coal miners robbing pillars of coal," she told her family. From there, the family moved to Buffalo, NY, for a few years before moving on to Upper Mont Claire, NJ. Her father, Edward "Ted" Carey, was an officer in the Salvation Army, working his way up the ranks to eventually become National Commander. Her mother, Faith Carey, directed women's work for the Salvation Army. Despite the family's lack of finances, Faith talked the head of a private Cleveland high school into accepting Connie into their program, based upon her capacious mind and love of language and literature. Connie graduated from Smith College in 1955, married Bruce Samuel, and they moved to Berkeley, where Bruce was enrolled in a master's program at Cal. She was on track to fulfill her childhood dream of becoming a housewife and raising children. If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans. After the divorce, Connie took a job as co-director of the Sacramento Peace Center during the Vietnam war. She also helped found the Sacramento Free School to provide an alternative education for her three children. Realizing she would need to further her own education to provide for the kids, she earned a law degree in 1976. In reflecting on her law career, Connie said: "I enjoyed my law career, especially early on-working with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board out of Salinas and wrapping up my career as an Administrative Law Judge at the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board." Connie spent her spare time traveling the world and doing humanitarian work: making trips to Cuba with Pastors for Peace to provide medical and educational supplies; going to Nicaragua as a guest of the revolutionaries; and attending language school in Guatemala, while living with a local family so she could better communicate with the farmworkers with whom she was working. She was politically active, participating in campaign and advocacy efforts, and exposed her children to great culture, including museums, opera, theater, and travel. She also raised them to fight injustice, taking them to protests and marches against racism, sexism, and blatant economic disparity. She once chained herself to a fence at San Quentin in protest of a pending execution. (Thankfully, this was after a work stint with the Board of Prison Terms as a Hearing Officer, where she was affectionately nicknamed "Cut'em Loose Carey" by the inmates). In 1982, Connie met her soulmate, John Marcus "JJ the Great!" Jones. They shared a love of jazz music, family, and friends. Together, they moved from the Monterey peninsula to Santa Cruz, a warmer climate, environmentally and socially. They regularly attended shows at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center, and JJ played gigs around the bay until his passing in 1987. In 1993, Connie met Leroy "Crab" Jones when he was rigging his sailboat at sunrise on a dock on Caye Caulker, Belize. The two married and built a house on land the government awarded Leroy in a redistribution effort. Connie had found her tropical paradise and loved splitting time between Belize and Santa Cruz. She was a dynamic and adventurous woman, continuing to work part time as a judge, traveling the world, and hiking until she was 80. Connie's health had gradually deteriorated over the last several years under the burden of chronic lung disease. Belize was no longer an option. Walking also became difficult, though she continued to meet with her walking buddies, resting happily on the beach when she became short of breath while they walked. Three weeks before her passing, Connie was checked into the emergency department with pneumonia. While in the hospital, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She told a neighbor that the diagnosis provided "an easy offramp." She returned home from the hospital to hospice care and a hospital bed in the same room in which JJ had succumbed to cancer 33 years prior. Connie breathed her last breath in the stillness of pre-dawn with the light of the full moon flooding the bedroom in her midtown Santa Cruz home of 37 years. Her final few breaths were taken as she looked lovingly into the eyes of her grandson. He gently held her hand while her son sat opposite him, holding her other hand. Her daughter stood tall at the foot of the bed. Two days earlier, Connie had awakened from a midday slumber and declared: "I died, and it was wonderful!" She was radiant, with a wide smile. Connie is survived by her husband, her brother and sister, cousins, nieces and nephews, and her children and grandchildren from her three marriages, including the latest love of her life, her great grandson, Joaquin "Keenan" Lara, whom she lovingly called "my great." She also leaves behind the many other strong women with whom she shared adventures over the years.