Researching James Jones

Born in Long Island, Jones played college basketball at SUNY Albany and worked as a sales executive for NCR Corporation before beginning his coaching career. Jones succeeded Dick Kuchen as 22nd men's basketball head coach of Yale University on April 27, 1999. On March 17, 2016, Jones and the Bulldogs upset the fifth-seeded Baylor University Bears in the first round of the 2016 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament.

Five of Jones' assistants have gone on to become head coaches - Ted Hotaling (University of New Haven), Rob Senderoff (Kent State), Isaiah Cavaco (Oberlin), Mark Sembrowich (Academy of Arts University), Mark Gilbride (Clarkson).

His brother, Joe Jones, is the current men's basketball head coach at Boston University and was previously the men's basketball head coach at Columbia University.

Jones is the oft-quoted former communications director for U.S. Senator John Kerry. At the forefront of many of the gay rights debates in the U.S. Congress during the 1990s, Jones became known as an advocate of the rights of people living with AIDS as well as gay and lesbian Americans. He also advised Senator Patty Murray on AIDS, trade, budget and financial policy during her freshman term in the United States Senate from 1993 - 1995.

In 2000, he was tapped by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to helm the operations of their largest grantee, the Vaccine Fund, the financing arm of the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization. This multibillion-dollar charity has as it mission to immunize every child in the 75 poorest countries of the world.

In 2002, Jones was a judge at the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City, New Jersey along with Donna Axum, Evan Dobelle and Jose Feghali.

In 2017, in recognition of his service to global public health, he was inducted to Oxford University’s Chancellor’s Court of Benefactors by Lord Patten of Barnes in a ceremony at Divinity School, Oxford.

Jones made his screen debut in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove. After working steadily in the theater, Jones won his first Tony Award in 1968 for his role in The Great White Hope, which he reprised in the 1970 film adaptation earning him Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. Jones starred with Diahann Carroll in the acclaimed 1974 romantic comedy-drama film Claudine, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. He won his second Tony Award in 1987 for his role in August Wilson's Fences. He became well known as the voice of Darth Vader in the original Star Wars film trilogy, released between 1977 and 1983. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Jones appeared in a number of successful films, including Conan the Barbarian (1982), Matewan (1987), Coming to America (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Sandlot (1993), and The Lion King (1994). During the 21st century, Jones has steadily continued working in the theater. He starred alongside Angela Lansbury in Gore Vidal's The Best Man (2012), and in an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy (2013). He also appeared in You Can't Take it With You (2014) with Annaleigh Ashford and in The Gin Game (2015–16) alongside Cicely Tyson. He reprised several of his popular film roles in the Star Wars prequel Rogue One (2016), the remake of The Lion King (2019) and Coming 2 America (2021).

Over his career Jones has won three Tony Awards (out of five nominations), two Primetime Emmy Awards and a Grammy Award. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1985. Jones was presented with the National Medal of the Arts by President George H.W. Bush in 1992. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2002. Jones was invited by President Barack Obama to perform Shakespeare at the White House Evening for Poetry in 2009. That same year he also received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. He received an Honorary Academy Award on November 12, 2011. Jones received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Harvard University on May 25, 2017. He was honored with a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre in 2017.

Throughout his service at No. 74 Squadron Jones won several awards and decorations; being awarded the Military Cross, the Distinguished Flying Cross and bar and the Distinguished Service Order. Although having a reputation for crashing his aircraft when attempting to land, Jones recorded 37 victories in just 3 months whilst flying the Royal Aircraft Factory S.E.5 during the First World War. After retiring in 1936, Jones was recommissioned after the outbreak of the Second World War, and flew briefly during the Battle of Britain. After retiring again at the end of the Second World War, Jones lived in Wales where he wrote three books on the RFC and RAF. He died in 1960 through complications after a fall at his home in Wales.

He was born in Utica, Ontario, the son of James Jones and Tryphenin Searles, and was educated in Uxbridge and Port Perry. Jones moved to Grenfell, Saskatchewan in 1886. In 1893, he married Addie M. Bird. Jones and his family moved to Kelowna in 1907. He served as mayor of Kelowna from 1912 to 1917. Jones was speaker for the assembly from 1929 to 1930 and served in the provincial cabinet as finance minister from 1930 to 1933. He was defeated when he ran for reelection as an independent Conservative in 1933.

In 1933, he moved to Victoria. Jones died in Saanich in 1954.

He was particularly associated with the "Classic Serial" during the golden age of BBC drama, and some of his most significant work was in televising late 19th-century and 20th-century British literary works. Two of his most ambitious and successful directorial adaptations were the miniseries The Forsyte Saga (1967), which became a national and international hit, and Fortunes of War (1987); and he was also noted for his award-winning productions of Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill (1974) and Harnessing Peacocks (1993).

Cellan Jones was Head of Plays at BBC Television, chairman of BAFTA, and chairman of the Directors Guild of Great Britain.

Born in Geddes, South Dakota, Jones moved with his family to Miller, South Dakota, where he graduated from Miller High School. He served in the United States Army Air Forces. In 1950, Jones graduated from the South Dakota State University College of Pharmacy. He worked in his family's business Jones Drug in Miller, South Dakota. He served on the Miller City Council and as mayor. Jones also served in the South Dakota House of Representatives as a Republican in 1987. He died in Miller, South Dakota.