Kenneth Arthur Newton Jones

Kenneth Arthur Newton Jones (1 September 1924 – 11 October 1964) was a Jamaican Labour Party (JLP) politician and Minister of Communications and Works in the nation's first independent Cabinet from 1962 until his untimely death in 1964. Biography

Early life and family Jones and his twin brother Keith Frederick Newton Jones were born at Stone Haven, his family's home in Hector's River, Portland. His father, Fred M. Jones, was a wealthy planter and public figure who would later become Custos of Portland. Their mother, Gladys Jones (née Smith), was a Quaker educator who, in 1918, had come to Portland as a missionary, teaching at Happy Grove School. There, she played an important role helping to transform it from a vocational to academic institution. Jones was also the elder brother of Evan Jones, the influential Jamaican writer.

Jones's interest in public service perhaps originated from his parents, both of whom were inducted into the Order of the British Empire for their charitable and civic works: In Elizebeth II's 1959 New Year Honours, Gladys Jones was awarded the rank of Member, the same year she was serving as a justice of the peace. Fred M. Jones was granted the rank of Officer in Her Majesty's 1963 New Year Honours.

Education and military service Jones attended the prestigious Munro College, a boarding school for boys in St Elizabeth, between 1935 and 1942. Subsequently, he left Jamaica to attended Earlham College in Indiana. On 19 May 1943, however, he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF). Upon completion of his training in Canada, 1944, and arriving in the United Kingdom, Jones was recorded as a Sergeant Pilot. During the last year of the war, he served alongside his school friends Flt Lt David Errol Chance and Fg Offr Oliver Marshall.

Personal life and death In 1958, Jones married Marlene d'Auvergne Holtz of Kingston, to which a daughter was born in 1960.

The novelist Marlon James described Jones as 'our Kennedy': a politician whose bipartisan appeal endangered him during the Jamaican political conflict.

Jones's funeral was held at the Friend's Church in Happy Grove, Portland, and attended by thousands of mourners who had gathered to hear the service on loud speakers. Another of his novels, Alonso and the Drug Baron (2006), begins with the political assassination of a man who is thrown from his hotel balcony.

One of the narrators of Marlon James's novel A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014), the ghost of Sir Arthur George Jennings, is based on Jones.