Dan Eakin/Contributing writer
A tornado put him on the right path
Jimmy Jones, gospel music legend, dies at 83
Jimmy Jones was one of the most wonderful men I have ever known.
He was the patriarch and leader of 1 A Chord, a gospel music group made up mostly of the Jones family which was seen and heard by millions of people all over the world on Christian television networks and on various television stations.
He died on Oct. 6, at age 83 of pneumonia in a Denton hospital.
I first met Jimmy Jones and his family about 21 years ago when they had the Jones Family Theatre in Farmers Branch. I was working for the Metrocrest News, a Dallas Morning News publication.
One evening, I was sitting back stage with him, when he told me the story of how he and his family began a full time gospel music ministry.
He said he had owned rock sites at various locations in Texas, and had a small airplane which he used to fly from one rock site to another.
One night he and an employee were flying, with Jimmy as the pilot, to one of his rock sites near Texarkana. While near Paris, Texas, he said, a tornado developed and they found themselves in the middle of it.
He said he kept fighting to keep the airplane from spinning in the tornado when he heard a voice saying, “Jimmy! Just let it go, let it go!”
He did, and the tornado threw the plane out.
The two men were safe, but the plane had lost its lights and their radio equipment was not working.
For sometime after that, he said he and his emplyee were in flight not knowing where they were going. Eventually, the clouds disappeared and there was some light from the moon and stars.
He said he saw a gravel road leading up to a farm house and told his friend, “I think I can set the plane down on that road.”
He did. He said the plane traveled up the road and then made a sharp left right at the farm house. He said the wing of the plane landed on the front porch and he and his partner stepped out of the plane right onto the porch.
They knocked on the door. A woman came to the door and said, “I just told my husband there is an airplane on our front porch, and he said, ‘Woman, you’re crazy’!”
He said he told the woman, “We thought we’d just drop in for supper.”
They were fed and the friendly farm couple told them they could spend the night and take care of the airplane the next day.
“That night, I laid on the bed in that farm house looking at the ceiling,” he said. “I told myself, Jimmy Jones, you have millions of dollars in the bank, and you’re still trying to make more.”
He added, “That night, I made a decision that I would no longer spend my life laying up treasure on earth, but I would spend the rest of my life trying to lay up treasure in heaven.”
His family was already enjoying singing gospel music, but had not yet been performing much in public. They soon could be found on the Daystar Television Network and were being seen and heard around the world. They also started theTexas Country Gospel program (hosted by daughter Mary Fay Jackson) which has won numerous national awards.
1 A Chord was made up primarily of Jimmy Jones, Mary Fay and and her aunt, Connie Perry.
During the past 20 years, I have told that story in several sermons which I have preached in several churches. It is so easy to get caught up trying to make a fortune on earth, even though our life span here is so short.
We forget that Jesus said, “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth and rust do corrupt and where thieves do not break through and steal.” — Matthew 6:19-20.
It may have taken a tornado to wake Jimmy up to change his priorities from the temporary to the eternal.
We could all learn a lesson from that.