THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 9, 1997 TAG: 9702090192
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C17 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: An Appreciation
SOURCE: BY BOB HUTCHINSON, OUTDOORS EDITOR
LENGTH: 86 lines
They held funeral services for Fred Jones on Wednesday. It was a rainy day, which would have suited Fred just fine. He loved the water.
Fred also would have been pleased that the rain stopped long enough for the services. He didn't like to discomfort anyone.
Services were held first in a little church in Dinwiddie Courthouse, Va., not far from his home there. Burial was in the sprawling cemetery adjacent to historic Blandford Church in nearby Petersburg. Fred's remains were cremated.
Fred died Saturday after an intense yearlong battle with cancer. It was neither pretty nor easy. I just hope that wherever his spirit is, and I think I know where, they have some good hunting and fishing.
To say that Fred liked the two outdoor pastimes is like saying Bob Hope likes to tell one-liners, like saying Arnold Palmer likes to play golf. Truth is, Fred practically lived to hunt and fish, although he was a devoted husband and father.
Although his permanent home was in Dinwiddie, he spent much time at a second home in Cheriton on the Eastern Shore.
He was my all-too-infrequent fishing buddy and especially loved to go after flounder and red drum.
Fred was exceptional in that he was accepted on the standoffish Eastern Shore, my home, almost as soon as bought a place and started spending some time there. He was part of a tribe of Dinwiddie residents that has settled in the general area.
Eastern Shoremen refer to non-natives as ``come-heres.'' So Fred named his 25-foot boat the ``Come Here.'' Later, a second, smaller boat became the ``Come Here II.''
Few Shoremen, however, considered him a come-here, an outsider. Maybe his broad Southern drawl, not unlike that of Northampton County, was responsible. Or maybe the fact that he was pure Virginian.
Frankly, I think it was because he and the Eastern Shore merely made a perfect fit.
The Shoremen invited him to play golf, to share their gin rummy games and their bourbon, their fishing holes, their huntable farms. In turn, he shared his giving, gregarious personality, his tremendous knowledge of hunting and fishing. And many of the fish he caught.
Within a year after buying his Cheriton home, he knew most of the good fishing holes, bayside and seaside, as well as the shallow, treacherous back country between the nearby village of Oyster and the Barrier Islands.
When flounder numbers plummeted, he had a dream, never realized, of creating the first flounder hatchery. If it ever becomes a reality, I have the perfect memorial name for it.
When he wasn't hunting or fishing, he loved to spend his mornings drinking coffee, entertaining friends and reading The Virginian-Pilot, especially the fishing news, on his side porch. ``Toy,'' his irrepressible black lab, was almost always at his side.
Many mornings I shared his porch, his coffee, his newspaper, his Toy. She never greeted me without a loud, threatening bark, a wagging tail and something for me to toss, to be retrieved.
Since Fred's death Saturday at an all-to-young 61, Toy refuses to leave the side of Marn, his widow. Toy knows something is wrong, bad wrong.
I never hunted with Fred. We shared hunting stories and talked about going. But we never made it. Fred loved gun sports and talking about them almost as much as fishing-hook sports and talking about them.
One of his favorite stories involved turkey hunting and a druggist in Cape Charles who shall remain nameless.
Turkey and Fred became established on the Shore at about the same time. Fred was one of the first to go for them.
Benevolent, it was as much fun for him to lead someone else to a spring gobbler as it was to bag one himself. His thrill was in being able to ``call'' or lure in a gobbler.
On one particular morning, he called in a bunch of birds after positioning the camouflaged druggist in front a big tree. Hiding, Fred called like a love-struck hen.
The druggist never shot and the birds eventually moved off. The druggist's explanation was that the birds were obviously all hens, since none had spread its wings, displaying, the way an amorous gobbler does.
``It was my fault,'' Fred would chuckle, recalling. ``He was a neophyte and I had neglected to tell him that he could legally shoot any bird with a beard hanging from its chest. I don't think he's ever quite forgiven me.''
Anyway, Fred is gone. I, along with many, many others, will miss him. He was a good man. And, I'm proud to say, my friend. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by GEORGE SAVAGE
Fred Jones, who died Feb. 1 at age 61, quickly learned the lairs of
the Eastern Shore's fish and fowl, including this red drum.