At almost 100 years old, Columbus resident David Jones has seen the world change a lot. Growing up, he never imagined that humans would go to space – or that he would be a part of it, helping to build spacecraft for some of NASA’s earliest space missions.

“I never knew that I was going to be someone that helped build a spacecraft,” Jones said.

Jones was born in Crawford on May 28, 1925. During his teenage years, World War II began. When he was 18 years old, he enlisted and qualified to go into the Army, but he was asked to join the Coast Guard instead, as they needed another steward.

Jones went to Norfolk, Virginia for training. But once he got on the water, he faced unexpected challenges.

“I never was fond of water,” Jones said. “ … But in that first ship, I got seasick. I had a bad feeling. … But after that, we went to Bermuda, in what we called a shakedown cruise. And after that, I didn’t get seasick anymore.”

Jones then went to Orange, Texas for the commissioning of the destroyer escort vessel he would serve on for nearly two years, the U.S.S. Mosley. The ship was on convoy duty, he said, and it crossed over to the European Theater a dozen times throughout his service.

After Jones’ service ended in 1945, he went to St. Louis, where he trained to work as a mechanic. By December 1955, Jones was hired by McDonnell AirCraft Corporation — a St. Louis aerospace manufacturing company that built airplanes for the U.S. military.

After a six-week training course, Jones started working on the company’s assembly line, putting together parts for planes – including planes used by the Air Force like F-4 Phantom jets.

Jones worked putting together components for the cockpits and cameras installed on the bottoms of planes for five years.

But in 1959, McDonnell Aircraft Corporation was selected as the primary contractor to produce the Mercury spacecraft for NASA’s project Mercury. Not long after, things changed for Jones.

“When they started to build the spacecraft, they selected mechanics that worked on airplanes,” Jones said. “So there was one Friday, when I was leaving the plant, and my supervisor came to me, and he said, ‘Jones, they want you to report to the spacecraft department Monday morning.’”

Jones worked on capsules for Project Mercury, the country’s first man-in-space program. He said he helped to build the heat shield that went on Friendship 7, the capsule that carried John Glenn. He later worked on spacecraft for Project Gemini, a project that tested equipment and mission procedures in Earth’s orbit.

Jones was also there when a few of the spacecraft launched in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

“When they launched the spacecraft, there were seven of us,” Jones said. “We took a flight from St. Louis to Atlanta, Georgia. Then we got the main flight out of Atlanta, Georgia to Orlando, Florida. … And we were stationed at the hotel for the launch of the spacecraft.”
“It was a beautiful sight,” Jones said. “Especially because it was night. The fire.”

Jones worked for McDonnell through its 1967 merger with Douglas Aircraft Company, only leaving the company after 20 years to come back closer to home in 1976.

In Columbus, he worked for the Army Corps of Engineers and later as a lock foreman at the John C. Stennis Lock & Dam. He retired in 1990.

Still, that doesn’t mean he stopped building things. Jones helped to renovate one church locally, and he helped build another, Trinity C.M.E., where his wife of 45 years used to pastor.

While moving and hearing have become more difficult over the years, Jones has never lost his sharp mind or mechanical skills, which led to him bonding with his neighbor, Jeffrey Smith, just a few years ago. Ever since, they have become good friends.

“One day, I was redoing the flooring in my trailer, and I had a gap, and I was trying to figure out how to do it,” Smith said. “And he told me that if I put the board in a certain spot, then that last board would just pop into place. And it worked.”

“I watch out for him, and see if he gets damage from storms and stuff,” Smith said. “I take his flag down for him, that kind of thing.”

Still, Jones is fiercely independent, preferring to get around on his own feet rather than use a walker and to fix things himself whenever he can. As he nears his 100th birthday, he said his only secret to a long life has been to try to do the right thing.

“I always like to be a person that’s doing right,” Jones said. “There’s one word that you will see throughout the Bible, and that word is righteousness. You’ll see that word. And through my life, I would try to do things that were right. And if it was wrong, I would avoid it.”

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