A Life Remembered

Each week, the Herald-Mail runs a feature article on a member of the Hagerstown community who died recently. This past Sunday, the article was about my grandfather, who was indeed very active in his community. He was a pharmacist and, although pharmacy is much different than it is today, he was your friendly neighborhood pharmacist--the type you actually used to have a conversation with. Besides his day job, he was active in the local theater community, the Exchange Club, and his lifelong hobby of ham radio.

The best compliment I could pay the man I called Poppop is that if he were my age, I believe he would be among my closest friends. He was smart and funny, always helped others, and really enjoyed tinkering with computers and other electronic stuff. After all, he was the person who took me to my first computer show (which grew out of ham radio swaps). I bought my first computer mouse, my first modem, and my AdLib sound card at computer shows he took me to.

This is about all I have to say about the passing of my grandfather. I have some thoughts on Alzheimer's disease that perhaps I'll share at a later time. For now, I prefer to reflect on the man he was before he was stricken with the disease. He lived a long life and, more importantly, he lived a good life, and I am a better person for having known him. Below, I leave you with the newspaper article:

When they were youngsters growing up in Baltimore, Kenneth Jones said that his older brother, Cyrus, became fascinated with amateur ham radio operation and set up a station in their home.

"One day, I came home to find that lightning had struck the antenna on our roof and set the house on fire," Kenneth recalled.

That incident failed to discourage Cyrus from what would become a lifelong avocation. And throughout his 88 years, he would show equal loyalty to all of the activities and the people in his life.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Cyrus was raised in Baltimore, graduating from the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy in 1939.

Kenneth, now a minister who lives in Gaithersburg, Md., with his wife, Larocca, said he used to help Cyrus with his studies when he was training to be a pharmacist.

"I would hold leaves in my hands and he would identify them by smelling or tasting them," Kenneth said. "Now, all pharmacists do is count pills."

Another strong memory of his brother was Cyrus' trait of never having a nasty word to say about anyone.

"And he never turned anyone down when they asked for his help," Kenneth said.

During World War II, Cyrus served with the U.S. Army Air Corps. Because of his knowledge of ham radio and electronics, he was assigned to teach radar and communications to pilots and navigators, said Joanne Jones, his wife of 37 years.

His military service completed, Cy moved to Hagerstown, where he worked for a time as a pharmacist at Washington County Hospital, Joanne said. Later, he was employed at Eakles Drug Store on Washington Avenue before buying Schindel's Pharmacy in 1968, one year after he and Joanne were married.

"When we bought Schindel's, we decided to close up at 7 p.m., and then we started closing at 6 p.m.," Joanne said. "We had time to do things then."

It was around that time that Joanne, who had been active in the Potomac Playmakers for some time, decided that two performers in the family were better than one.

"I pulled him right into it," she said.

Over the years, Joanne and Cyrus performed in numerous Potomac Playmakers productions, many together. In 1979, the couple was cast in "Kiss Me Kate," a musical based on Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew."

"I was Kate, the star of the show," Joanne said, showing off newspaper clippings of the performance. Cyrus took on two parts in the play-within-a-play presentation.

"Look at these pictures of Cy - he had great legs," Joanne said.

Once his Playmaker performance days were over, Cy and Joanne both were active behind the scenes, often taking ticket orders in their home, she said.

Cy also was a founding member and lifetime member of the Antietam Radio Relay Association with the radio call numbers W3EHA. He spent a fair amount of time involved in the hobby that he had enjoyed since childhood.

Cyrus Francis Jones died Jan. 27 at the age of 88. For a number of years, he had been struggling with Alzheimer's disease, which first showed up about seven years ago, his wife said.

"I was holding Cy's hand," Joanne said. "He died quietly while I was with him."