Connie Jones
Connie “Ceejay” Jones
Connie Jones, whose nickname is Ceejay, was born in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwestern Virginia, where she spent the first 11 years of her life. It was in Virginia that she began writing poetry and realizing that writing was her God-given talent.
Her family moved to Bellbrook, (Greene County) Ohio when she was 11 and she lived in the same county 55 years or more.
After graduation from Bellbrook High School, Connie married a man who played the organ for a traveling evangelist. They traveled until she was almost eight months pregnant with her firstborn, then settled down after deciding the road and living out of suitcases, was no place to raise a child. Both took regular jobs, she when her son was nine (9) months old.
Connie's first job was cashier for a department store. After working there for seven (7) years, one of her customers liked the way she helped him with his rain check and offered her a job as cashier at a loan company down the street. He was the district supervisor for the company. She took the job starting at the same rate of pay she was making after seven (7) years with the department store.
That was a blessing because Connie and her husband had since divorced and she found herself raising two young children without child support from the father.
Six months later, she was promoted to assistant manager of the loan company in charge of collections and later offered a job as manager in another state, but she turned that down. Her children were young and she did not want to move away from family.
She then worked for the Air Force (Dept. of Defense) as a civilian for 13 years. The first two as a secretary; the last 11 were spent as Budget Assistant for the C-17 Airlift and Cargo plane where she monitored travel, training and overtime budgets for 420 military and civilian employees and generated a monthly funds status report for all program managers and the general officer who oversaw the program.
Additionally, Connie was chosen by the U. S. State Department to drive American and International delegates who participated in the Bosnian Peace Talks held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. She has often said, that was the highlight of her career because it was history in the making and she was excited to be a part of that. During her tenure at Wright-Patterson, she also volunteered to test the ejection seat of an F-16 fighter jet.
While working for the Air Force, Connie volunteered at a public access television station in Dayton, Ohio where she learned every aspect of television broadcasting and became an Independent Producer allowing her to make award-winning music videos and TV shows.
After leaving employment for the Air Force, Connie became Office Manager and Marketing Director for the CornerStone Christian News, a monthly Christian newspaper, overseeing four employees and promoting the paper. She also wrote articles, took pictures, sold ads, and helped wherever needed to ensure the paper got out on time.
While keeping that job, she accepted an Editorial Assistant position with the Dayton Daily News (DDN) who forced her to quit the Christian paper due to conflict of interest. As Editorial Assistant, she helped DDN set up two branch offices in separate counties for which she received a cash award more than her weekly salary.
After submitting an article to the religion editor about a nationally-known Southern Gospel group retiring, Connie was asked to write more for the paper while maintaining her editorial assistant duties, writing obituaries, human interest stories, business articles, even critiques on major music concerts, anything assigned to her.
In 2003, she moved to Florida, and did some freelance writing for the St. Petersburg Times, Clearwater Edition. While there, she also took a job with Nielsen Media Research, convincing people all over the U. S. to participate in their television ratings and other over-the-phone surveys.
In 2014, Connie moved to Kerrville, Texas and landed a job with the Kerrville Daily Times as a Classified Sales Consultant where she also made cold calls to sell ads for special inserts into the paper.
As a history buff, she came to Arizona in 2018 to visit Tombstone, the Town too Tough to Die, and fell in love with the Sonoran Desert. Before going back to Texas, she filled out an application for an apartment, got a call a few months later that one was available and moved to Benson, Arizona (Cochise County) in 2019. She lived there two years caring for physically- and mentally-challenged adults.
Connie retired in 2021 and spent the last five years in Tucson while exploring this beautiful state that offers everything from mountains, plains, and forests, to deserts. But after five years of retirement, she missed working and longed to jump back into doing what she loves best - writing for a newspaper, but not just any newspaper, the Standard Newspaper in beautiful Kingman, Arizona, a corridor of Historic Route 66.
