Navy man to be Phoenix Veteran’s Day Parade grand marshal

PHOENIX — Tuesday is Veterans Day. KTAR continues its salute to the veterans who will serve as grand marshals in the Phoenix Veterans Day Parade.

One of them is Robert Jones, a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer who is an example of thousands of veterans who may not have seen combat but served their country admirably during the Cold War and other events in the 1970s through the 1990s.

Ever since Jones was a kid, he wanted to be in the Navy.

“I was always thinking Navy,” he said. “It was always romantic to me.

“John Paul Jones is kind of like a hero because, of course, of his last name, Jones. When you’re a kid, you’re always looking for things to relate to. When you have a common name like Jones, you like to relate to the heroes like John Paul Jones and all of that.”

Growing up in the Midwest, Jones was into building model ships such as the USS Enterprise — no, not the one on Star Trek; rather, the U.S. Navy aircraft that first hit the seas in 1960.

“It was one of the first I ever built when I was about 10 or 11,” he said.

As fate would have it, Jones was assigned to the Enterprise when he entered the Navy in 1975.

“So I got to see in life everything that I dreamed about as a kid — the planes taking off and all that,” he said. “I got to experience that for the three years that I served on her.”

Jones boarded the Enterprise one year after it helped evacuate refugees during the fall of South Vietnam.

“(The guys on the ship) were telling these stories how they flew all of these helicopters out to the Enterprise,” he said. “The captain was having these helicopters shoved off of the side of the ship to make room to stack as many of these refugees as they could. They were packing them everywhere.

“The ship is only designed to hold 5,000, and they brought 10,000 refugees plus the 5,000 members of the crew back to the states. They were telling us about that and I thought, ‘Shucks, I missed it!'”

After he left the Enterprise, Jones served on the USS Wainwright and other ships.

During the Cold War, he served on ships that were always staring down the Russians. Once, his ship came within 200 yards of a Russian cruiser, and he was surprised at what he saw.

“I took pictures of a Russian cruiser off of the coast of Israel and saw that they (the crew of the Russian ship) were playing volleyball,” he said with a laugh, adding the ball was tethered so it couldn’t bounce off the ship.

Jones said the United States and Soviet Union were always trying to entice each other into violating international law.

“Everybody was always looking for an excuse,” he said. “The thing is that cooler heads always seemed to prevail because our Cold War never went hot.”

In the 1980s, Jones’ ship was sent into a hot zone near Libya, as President Ronald Reagan ordered attacks on Libyan leader Mohammar Khaddafi.

One day, Jones’ ship was threatened — or so he thought. The sailors were ordered to general quarters after they were “locked on” by an aircraft’s radar.

“So I’m at my station, and I hear the chaff launchers going off,” Jones said, referring to a decoy quick-reaction system aboard ships for self-defense against surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles.

“That means that somebody thinks there’s a missile coming at us. We’re going nuts,” he said while laughing. “Then we find out that it’s an F-18 Marine (one of ours) wanting to test his radar to see if it worked.”

Because he was never shot at, Jones said being named one of the parade’s grand marshals feels unwarranted.

“I don’t really feel like I’m deserving of such an honor,” he said.

But his record says otherwise. During his 20-year Navy career that ended in 1995, Jones received the National Defense Medal, the Navy Expedition Medal, and numerous ribbons and medals for good conduct and sharpshooting.

It was his 23-year-old daughter, Kirstin, who nominated him for grand marshal.

“He has supported me through my whole life,” she said. “I am honored to be his daughter, and I wanted to show him the best way I could to honor him.”

You can say Kirstin is pretty proud of her dad.

“He means the world to me. Honestly, I hope that he’s around a lot longer,” she said. “I honestly don’t know where I would be without him.”

Though he is retired from the Navy and living in Phoenix, Jones still serves his country by working for the Federal Aviation Administration.

The next time you board a plane, thank Jones. He maintains the radar that keeps you safe. And he isn’t planning to stop serving anytime soon.

“Every time my radar works, I’m saving lives,” he said.

“As long as I’m serving my country, it feels like I’m doing something important, and that’s what I like about serving my country.”