This gallery will include more material when found. Herbert Stanley Jones was born on August 16, 1902, in Nova Scotia, lived in Winter Haven for a while and in 1923 he moved to Miami. The Jones family lived for decades in a large two story corner home with a large side and backyard full of fruit trees at 300 NW 18th Avenue, a couple of blocks from the Miami Orange Bowl. Their 1956 telephone number was 82-0651 (thanks Ellie Wheeler!). The Jones and their daughter Mickey and grand-daughters parked 40 or so fan cars in their yard during football games at the Orange Bowl for decades.

Mr. Jones founded Jones Shutter Products shortly after the Hurricane of 1926 with his wife Estelle "Bubbles" Robinson Jones. The company was located at 246 NW 29th Street in Miami for many years before moving to a company-owned new plant and offices at 8105 W. 20th Avenue, Hialeah, in the fall of 1965. In the mid-1950's they also had a plant in east Hialeah at 1064 E. 29 Street, phone number TU8-6433 (from a 1956 Miami telephone directory, courtesy of Ellie Wheeler). Mr. Jones had a long-standing patent on a v-shaped design on the sides of the galvanized steel or aluminum shutters that allowed them to interlock with each other when secured at the tops and bottoms of the shutters. Many of the large Miami Beach hotels, shopping centers, individual stores, Miami-Dade Junior College-North Campus, and homeowners had hurricane shutters made by Jones Shutter Products. Many of the commercial customers and some of the residential customers had yearly installation contracts where a crew from Jones Shutter would securely install the shutters in advance of a hurricane and take them down and store them after the hurricane.

Jones Shutter Products also manufactured most of the cupolas installed on top of all Howard Johnson's restaurants and motor lodges. Mr. Howard Johnson and Mr. Jones were good friends for many years and they played golf together whenever Mr. Johnson came to town. The cupolas had a weather vane on top featuring silhouettes of Simple Simon and Pieman or a lamplighter mounted on top of a tapered turquoise fiberglass and aluminum support structure with fins. The cupolas had internal lighting so they could be illuminated at night with a turquoise color for easy recognition by travelers. Several images of the cupolas and a history of the Howard Johnson's restaurants can be viewed at: http://www.roadsidefans.com/hojo.html and http://www.agilitynut.com/eateries/hojos.html . Other fiberglass products included shower doors, front doors, sliding glass doors, tables and partitions.

I was at the Jones Shutter Products plant many times as a kid, often daily, and I worked there full-time for $1.25 and then $1.35 an hour during the summer of 1965 and part-time in the fall of 1965 while going to Miami-Dade Junior College. I installed shutters with a crew on the Gulf American Land building at the corner of Biscayne Boulevard and NE 79th Street, a Rexall drug store in Hialeah, a condo in a high-rise just south of Haulover Inlet and large homes on Star and Palm Islands in advance of a hurricane in 1965 (Cleo?).

The Jones family and my family were friends from the early 1950's until the 1970's and 1990's when deaths separated everyone. My aunt Norma Boyd was Herbie's secretary and bookkeeper for many years. My father and Herbie were good friends and they used to drink together at numerous places. We went on many fishing trips with the Joneses over the years, most of them in Florida Bay but also some east of Miami. Mr. Jones always knew where the fish were and everyone onboard always caught a ton of good eating fish and no fish was ever wasted.

Herb Jones passed away on August 22, 1980 at age 78 after a brief illness. More information will be added when I find it or his grand-daughters provide it to me.