Old Missoula

Deane Jones – Missoulian editor and columnist – No Regrets

Editor Deane Jones wrote an interesting column in The Missoulian for several years beginning in the 1967, often commenting about Missoula’s history and people or things associated with it. He was a native Missoulian and lived there most of his life. With his sometimes acerbic style, his column occasionally stirred up debates regarding his recollections and he sometimes noted that his memory had been faulty when readers corrected him. More often, though, his column seemed to draw responses that confirmed his thoughts or added to them. Apparently, he offered to write his thoughts and memories without any plans of writing a book similar to the one that Dean A. L. Stone wrote. Too bad. His tales are just as interesting as Stone’s, if less accessible. Some of his comments and observations will be quoted and added to this website, under the ‘Deane Jones Column’ heading.

Deane Jones’ obituary below appeared in The Missoulian on August 20, 1991:

Veteran newsman Deane Jones, 81, dies

By Evelyn King for the Missoulian

Deane Sterne Jones, 81, a veteran Missoula newsman, local historian and amateur boxing champion, died Saturday of complications from emphysema and diabetes, in St. Joseph Hospital in Polson.

Memorial services will be at 3 p. m. Wednesday, Aug. 21, in the Elks Lodge, Pattee and Front streets. The family requests memorials be sent to the Elks Youth Activity Fund.

Survivors include his wife, Elizabeth Withrow Jones; son, Robert Withrow Jones, and daughter-in-law, Hazel Foley Jones; daughter, Patricia Hochhalter and son-in-law Harold Hochhalter; daughter, Carol Jones-Baugher; 12 grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Another daughter, Bette Deane Jones, preceded him in death.

Other survivors are a brother and sister-in-law, Robert E. and Florence Jones, also of Missoula; a sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Jean Nooney, Escondido, Calif.; an aunt, Lillian McIvor, Everett, Wash. Another brother, Madison, also preceded him in death.

Jones was born on Feb. 2, 1910, in a house at 219 E. Railroad St., the second son of the bottling foreman at the Highlander Brewery.

He attended four Missoula grade schools, skipped the seventh grade and entered Missoula County High School at age 12. He graduated from high school at the age of 16.

Jones enrolled in the University of Montana School of Journalism and graduated in 1931. While in college, he once said he met several people who influenced him. The most noted was Arthur L. Stone, first dean of the School of Journalism. Others were his life-long friend, the late William Dugal McFarland, long-time owner of the Oxford, and Dean O’Leary, a Butte native.

O’Leary, who later became a Montana boxing champion, rekindled Jones’ interest in boxing. During his amateur boxing career, Jones lost only two of 36 fights. In later years, Jones and McFarland taught boxing at the Missoula Elks Club. Jones also taught boxing to Air Force cadets, stationed at UM, during World War II.

As a boy, Jones was a Missoulian news carrier and later was sports writer and business manager for the high school newspaper, the Konah.

In 1931, he was hired as night police reporter for the Missoulian and on Sept. 26, 1931, he married Elizabeth Withrow of Essex.

Named city editor of the Missoulian in 1935, he was eventually promoted to managing editor. He became managing editor of the Sentinel, an afternoon paper, in 1960, after Lee Enterprises of Davenport, Iowa, bought the Missoulian. He managed that paper until it was discontinued in 1967.

Writing always remained Jones’ first love in his profession. He began a general-interest column named “Keeping Up With Jones.”

Jones retired in 1972 but continued to write the column on an irregular basis for another year. Following retirement, he and his wife divided their time between Kailua-Kona in Hawaii and their summer home on Finley Point. In a 1979 interview, when asked about his view of life as he approached his 70^th year, Jones chuckled and said:

“Any prognostication for longevity would be pretty far-fetched. But while I’m here I’m going to enjoy the son of a bitch. You have to ride with the punches. You get an awful lot of edges knocked off if you don’t. I have no regrets.”

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