Early into his job, Raymond “Ray” Jones of
Kansas City said he thought like a fireman: jump into his
suit, slide down a pole, board a truck and race to the scene.
But responding to major emergencies – hurricanes,
tornadoes, flooding, the explosion that leveled a huge grain
elevator, etc. – requires careful planning, sometimes
massive mobilization and strategic administration, Jones says.
A director of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, Jones sees many
parallels between his work in responding to emergencies and
the mission of the church, one of his passions.
Ray Jones
Jones is a former Air Force officer, former commander
of the Kansas Air National Guard Command Support Squadron and
now a federal administrator for a regional office of the
nation’s emergency response program.
The title is long: area emergency manager, Emergency
Management Strategic Healthcare Group, Veterans Health
Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, in the
Veterans Affairs Heartland Network in Kansas City, Mo.
There’s more. Jones also serves as area manager,
National Disaster Medical System for the metropolitan areas of
Kansas City and Wichita.
In short, he helps prepare states, communities and
individuals for emergencies, mobilizes medical personnel and
makes sure they’re properly equipped and paid.
And while his office is regional – covering Kansas,
Missouri and southern Illinois – Jones is part of a
federal team that responds to weather-related and other
emergencies wherever the United States has jurisdiction.
When Hurricane Marilyn hit St. Croix in the Virgin Islands in
1995, “while the storm clouds were still swirling,”
Jones supervised a medical team that completely took over
medical care on the island. The local doctors had to attend to
their own families and homes that had been damaged or
destroyed.
“There was no power at the start,” he said. “It
was hot and humid, hard to use radios and telephones.”
Jones’s medical workers – “several hundred,”
he recalls – remained on St. Croix for two months.
Jones also was a medical administrator in Puerto Rico after
Hurricane Georges ripped across the island, causing nearly 600
deaths and $5.9 billion in damage. Jones’ medical teams
were part of a deployment of about 5,000 people to Puerto
Rico.
His medical teams even are on standby at national events
where, some might say, the threat is no more than hot air:
Republican and Democratic national conventions.
An elder at the 2,100-member Colonial Presbyterian Church in
Kansas City, Jones sees parallels between his work in
emergency response and his passion for mission.
Jones, who serves as missions administrator for Colonial
Presbyterian, says the purpose of Christian mission is to help
people through the presentation of the Gospel and other means.
Through his work at Colonial, Jones encourages young people
to take church-sponsored short-term missions. Several have
done so and gone on to become career missionaries. He also
helps missionaries on furlough receive additional training so
their mission work can be more effective.
Once a year, Jones becomes a missionary himself. Last year,
he was in Paris, handing out Bibles and Christian audio
cassettes to Muslims who were boarding ferry boats to vacation
in North Africa. He is unapologetic about the Gospel and the
truth of Scripture.
“Our culture has influenced people’s hearts,”
Jones said. “I can tell they feel deeply about the
issues. They start feeling that they must have so much
compassion for the problems we have in our society. Their
obedience to God wanes and they become more active in the
culture. Following the culture becomes more important than
sticking to the truth of Scripture. Then we see them start the
process of thinking that Scripture really isn’t at all
what it means to be.
“That really grieves me.”
Jones is a native Kansan. He was reared in a Christian family
with a commitment to missions.
He finished his degree work and ROTC training at Wichita
State University at the age of 19, then decided to spend two
years teaching high school and attending graduate school so
that he would be 21 before taking his commission in the U.S.
Air Force.
He served six years of active duty as aide-de-camp to the
commanding general, U.S. Air Forces Southern Command in Latin
America, and as protocol and liaison officer, Inter-American
Defense Board in Washington, D.C.
His assignments reflected his fluency in Spanish, a language
he learned while he was growing up in Wichita. Jones also
speaks French, Italian, Portuguese and some Dutch.
After his active duty, Jones spent 15 years in the Kansas Air
National Guard, from which he retired in 1989.
Jones and his wife Kay both enjoy international travel and
working with foreign exchange students through Colonial
Presbyterian, where both are ordained elders. They currently
host a student from Bulgaria who attends the University of
Kansas.
Jones said Robert L. Howard of Wichita, chairman of the
Presbyterian Lay Committee, is responsible for getting him
involved in the ministry of the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
Before he moved to Kansas City, Jones was a member of
Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Wichita, where Howard was
one of the leaders in his congregation’s mission
outreach. He said Howard urged him to become a director of the
Presbyterian Lay Committee to provide leadership at a national
level of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Jones accepted the Lay
Committee’s invitation to become a director in 1998.
Outside activities include family time with his wife,
children and grandchildren.