The River: As dense gray fog spread over river, word came of Capt. Charles Tandy Jones’ death at age 101

The riverboat captain is a storyteller, and Captain Don Sanders will be sharing the stories of his long association with the river — from discovery to a way of love and life. This a part of a long and continuing story.

By Capt. Don Sanders
Special to NKyTribune

Like a light mist this past week, the first whispers of the death of Captain Charles Tandy Jones spilled from the steep banks of the Great Kanawha River until the sorrowful tidings spread like a dense grey fog over the entire river community.

Captain Jones, also known as Charles, or just, “Charlie,” was born in June 1918, over 101-years-ago. Unlike the very rare few who ever obtain such an advanced age, Mr. Jones was at work every day, right up to the end of his long life. I won’t try to recall all of his many accomplishments and awards but will, instead, stick to remembering the influence this great man had on me resulting from our limited engagements.

Long before I met Charles Jones, my mom, dad, brothers, and I adopted a particular steamboat that came and went in the Cincinnati harbor many decades ago as our “family boat,” as we dared call the steam towboat, the HERBERT E. JONES. The JONES, named after the patriarch of the Charleston family, Mr. Herbert E. Jones, Charlie’s father, seemed as dear to my folks as it was to her rightful owners.

“HERE COMES OUR BOAT,” our mother, Anna Margaret, would yell as the thunderous whistle of the HEJ announced the arrival of another tow of fifteen loaded barges of West “By God,” Virginia sweet coal for the Hatfield Coal Company terminal across the river from Walt’s Boat Club where out sternwheeler MARJESS lay moored. Mom spent many precious feet of 8mm home movie tape filming the JONES doing its own tug work hustling loads to the Hatfield dock and returning with empties to the deep pocket of water beneath the C&O RR Bridge when the JONES tied off her barges while she worked above our harbor.

What a show!

The Jones boat wasn’t the only steamboat still hauling coal to the long stretch of barge fleets across from Walt’s. The Ohio River Company had the OMAR, ORCO, and the CHARLES DORRANCE, while the American Rolling Mill Company (ORMCO) steamers the GEORGE M. VERITY and the WEBBER W. SEBALD were frequent visitors. But it was the HERBERT E. JONES’s arrival into the neighborhood that excited us most. After all, the JONES was “our” steamboat.

Author Captain Fredrick Way, Jr., the original editor of the S&D REFLECTOR, the quarterly publication of the Sons & Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen, spilled several puddles of ink writing about Cap’n Jones and one of his sons, Nelson Jones. As a boy of twelve, Nelson was the “founding father” of the Charleston, WV Sternwheel Regatta. I recall a photo in the REFLECTOR of Nelson, his dad, Captain Pete Denny, and the Mayor of Charleston, John Hutchinson, making a fuss over the results of a sternwheeler race at the regatta. Many years later, as Captain O. Nelson Jones, the enterprising man and the floating equipment he had at his command, was the impetus which kept the Cincinnati Tall Stacks afloat for as long as it lasted.

In the late Spring of 1976, my phone rang and I was invited to Charleston by Ross Tuckwiller, the General Manager of a new sternwheel coming out named for the late Captain Denny and owned by Cappy Lawson Hamilton, a coal operator, and as I was to find, a close friend and business associate of Charles Jones. At Port Amherst, the headquarters of, then, Amherst Industries, Lawson hired me as the DENNY’s first captain as we stood beneath a coal tipple belonging to the Joneses.

That summer, my first deckhands aboard the DENNY included, among others,  Bill Barr, Tom Cook, and Nelson Jones, all college guys from prominent local families, but who loved the river and boats and weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Within several passing years, all three became U. S. Coast Guard licensed Masters, and each had commercial towboats named for them: the MVs TOM COOK, BILL BARR, and the O. NELSON JONES.

That first summer on the Kanawha River, the DENNY docked at a high cement wall at the foot of Capitol Street where, on occasion, Captain Charles Jones brought his family sternwheeler, the LAURA J, alongside loaded with family, friends and business associates. Mr. Jones was easy to meet and liked to talk to about the river. Everyone, it seemed, called him “Charlie” in a friendly personal way. Mr. Jones explained to me how changing the paddlewheel of the LAURA J. from all wood construction to steel lightened the weight overhanging the boat and cut maintenance drastically. That conversation was one that still rings valid over forty years later when I daydream about the paddlewheel and what I can do to improve the mechanical performance of the Rafter CLYDE and reduce the workload as I grow older.

After two years, I departed the Kanawha River Valley. After a false start or two, I set my sights on starting a business in my hometown to recycle used aluminum beverage cans. Can-Do All-Aluminum All-American Recycling Company became a reality on 11 April 1980 when my recent bride, Peggy, and I opened-shop at # 6 West Pike Street in Covington, KY. Starting a business on my own was a new venture I hadn’t done in entirety, although I was a part of other start-ups, including the P. A. DENNY adventure.

Searching for business models, I turned to my experiences in Charleston four years earlier. I remembered how well-structured the companies were belonging to Lawson Hamilton and Charles Jones, and how they interacted so smoothly with their employees and customers. Naturally, both these smart, respected, and beloved businessmen became my role models. Much of what Can-Do Recycling became was a reflection of what I’d seen and experienced on the Great Kanawha River.

I was absent from the Charleston scene until June 1990 when Peggy and I and our two young sons, Jesse and Jonathan, visited Captain Bela Berty, who’d taken command of the DENNY. While there, I took some time away from the sternwheeler to drive the five miles to Port Amherst and pay a visit to Nelson Jones, my former deckhand-buddy. Like his father Charles, and grandfather Herbert E. Jones before him, Nelson had risen to a dominant role in the family enterprise. An aid met me at the reception desk to inform me that the youngest of the Joneses “was in a meeting with the leadership of the United Mine Workers, Local 100, and could not be disturbed.” Two generations earlier, it was Nelson’s grandfather, Mr. Herbert, locking horns with the likes of the celebrated UMW leader, Mr. John L. Lewis.

A couple of hours after getting back aboard the P. A. DENNY, who showed up driving a muddy pickup truck? It was none other than Nelson flashing his billion-dollar signature smile. Soon, old-times reigned again aboard the DENNY on the Kanawha River.

A time or two, I talked to Nelson on the marine radio when he passed the GRAND VICTORIA II aboard the M/V J. S. LEWIS, and I saw him for a short time at a couple of Tall Stacks celebrations in Cincinnati. He was always on the run, it seemed, rushing from one trouble spot to the next. It was Nelson and his crew who worked effortlessly behind the scenes and kept the river celebration going for as long as it continued before Cincinnati lost interest in maintaining the riverboat rendezvous.

Young Nelson Jones, already a legendary figure in the river community, was fixed to assume the leadership roles of his illustrious predecessors. Instead,  tragically, he became seriously ill and died in 2010 at the young age of only 52. The fluvial fraternity was saddened and shocked at the loss of such a dynamic, vibrant soul of the sort someone once lamented, “I can’t imagine anyone like Nelson ever dying.” Inevitably his family, especially his father Charles and Nelson’s devoted wife, Captain Robin Strickland Jones, were devasted. Still, both found the strength to carry on without the guiding star they’d chosen to light their paths into the future.

The last time I saw Cappy Charles T. Jones was in October of 2014 at the 100th Anniversary celebration of the Steamer BELLE of LOUISVILLE at the city on the Falls of the Ohio River. The J. S. LEWIS had towed the historic steam, sternwheel towboat, the WILLIAM P. SNYDER, JR., from her berth nearby the Ohio River Museum at Campus Martius, Marietta, Ohio, on the Muskingum River to Louisville. Nelson’s steam barge, loaded with a collection of steamboat whistles and a steam calliope, came along in tow and lay docked on the outboard side of the CLYDE.

Mr. Jones, then 96, arrived at the riverfront gathering in a long, black automobile in the company of many attentive aids determined to shepherd him safely aboard the LEWIS for a private party hosted by their boss. Though I wanted to say hello to Captain Jones, he was out of the car and across the gangway into the LEWIS before I had a chance to run interference. However, I did get a glimpse of the back of his overcoat while he hustled toward his company boat tied alongside the SNYDER.

Through a mutual friend, West Virginia author, Todd Hanson, I’ve gotten some musings regarding friendly meetings between Todd and Mr. Jones who, it seemed from Todd’s reports, remained as alert and reasonably fit as I remembered him from my Charleston days when the LAURA J lay beside the P. A. Denny. It was Todd who sent an early morning text, last Monday, that changed the timbre of my next few days:

“If you haven’t already heard… Mr. Jones passed away in his sleep last night.”
Just a few days earlier, writing about a steamboat artifact in the Port Amherst Museum, Todd said, “Hope someday to take you to see it. If you hurry, we might even get to hang out with Mr. Jones.”

Regrettably… I am going to miss that rendezvous at Port Amherst.

Captain Don Sanders is a river man. He has been a riverboat captain with the Delta Queen Steamboat Company and with Rising Star Casino. He learned to fly an airplane before he learned to drive a “machine” and became a captain in the USAF. He is an adventurer, a historian, and a storyteller. Now, he is a columnist for the NKyTribune and will share his stories of growing up in Covington and his stories of the river. Hang on for the ride — the river never looked so good.