Alumnus and Educator Frank Jones, Wife Evelyn Jones, Invest in Education
By Pat Blakeslee

Dorothea Stout knew that her Uncle Frank [Jones, ’38 (Mas)] had a comfortable life, but she saw little evidence that the former history teacher and his wife, Evelyn, were people of means. She knew he and Evelyn, a retired medical librarian, had a modest home in Delaware, a vacation home in New Hampshire, and a few investment properties. What she did not know until Evelyn died last year was that the couple’s lifetime of hard work and wise investments would add up to an estate valued at more than $1.5 million.

Their beneficiaries included Warner, three other universities, and Evelyn’s high school alma mater. The gift to Warner, expected to exceed $160,000, will support graduate teacher education.

Both Frank and Evelyn invested a substantial portion of their careers in education. After graduating from Columbia, Frank began his career close to his hometown (Franklinville, N.Y.) as a teacher in the West Valley Central School. He went on to earn a master’s degree in education at the University of Rochester and moved into administration at West Valley as a principal. During WWII, he was base commander of a naval school in Kansas. He also taught briefly in Pittsburgh, N.H., before moving to Delaware, where he ventured into a large-scale chicken farm and feed operation. He ended his career back in the classroom, teaching in the public schools near his home in Seaford, Del.
Evelyn Krueger-Jones also began her career as a teacher at a small school near her home in Madison, S.D. After one year of teaching, she went to George Peabody College in Nashville, Tenn., to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree in library science—a rather bold move for a woman of her day.

According to her brother, Fritz Krueger, Evelyn “was a woman with her own mind.” Both she and her sister “took off in their own directions,” he says, striking out to pursue careers at a time when marriage was the expected trajectory for young women. She worked as a librarian in Corvallis, Ore., until an offer of free nurses’ training during WWII took her east to earn a second Bachelor of Science degree, this one in nursing, at Yale. After working as a nurse for a number of years in Oregon and Maryland, she returned to library work in Washington, D.C. In the final years of her career, she worked as a medical librarian at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

Evelyn and Frank met through his former wife, Bernice, a neighbor from South Dakota whom she became close to while working at the National Institutes of Health. After Bernice died, Frank eventually convinced Evelyn to give up the single life and join him in Delaware in 1976.

Stout says that Evelyn and Frank shared a love of books and antiques. “Both she and Uncle Frank read everything in sight.” Stout recalls. “They kept right on studying, even after they retired.”

Their love of learning will be carried on by the future Warner graduates who will benefit from their foresight and their generosity.