Ollie worked in the nursery, and Eugene felled trees. He was the son of Jim Jones, who established Jonestown. James Warren Jones and his wife, Marceline. When Jim Sr., a local Democratic Party darling, met with future first lady Rosalynn Carter, Jim Jr. proudly went along. Those who broke rules were disciplined. And when her 23-year-old sister joined, Jordan went to live with her at age 12. According to his 1983 interview with The Washington Post, he was in this line of work even back then. For 19 of his 24 years, they were all he knew. His handshake was weak. If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 911, or call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. target_type: 'mix' After Ollie became pregnant, she was sent to Jonestown; Eugene remained behind. We were turned back by Johnny Jones, Jim Jones' stern-faced adopted black son. Vilchez returned to Jonestown for the first time in 40 years. File photo: Stephan Jones, son of Rev. And I looked around and there were at least 15 people looking at me. Stephan believed he was too cowardly to follow through with the oft-threatened revolutionary suicide.. Vilchez worked as office manager at a private crime lab for 20 years and now, at 61, sells her artwork. 'She gives us the order that were supposed to kill ourselves,' Vilchez recalled. I believe that it was always a personal agenda for my father, and yes, there was a gradual shift in the balance. They would survive and both return home to California. Some of those leaving the temple eyed the vehicles with suspicion. . He was within a few minutes and a few yards of accomplishing his goal: to get out temple members who were afraid to leave or possibly held against their will. Quietly the men with the tractor motioned aside a group of curious Guyanese children and other bystanders. " Pause for effect. " He was summoned to the temple radio room. They were at a basketball tournament five years ago, in November 1978 when the congressman and the reporters came to Jonestown. In California, he was steeped in temple life. All the people who lay there around him had followed him. He has learned to train a particular kind of eye on himself, on his own imposing presence, the handsome face, the instinct for gently taking hold of a conversation and pulling it where he wants it to go. After the temple exodus to Guyana, he was given a public relations post in Georgetown and was part of the basketball team. Maybe they saw no hope--because they didn't see themselves leaving, but they didn't want to go on with Jim Jones. They have altogether three daughters. Anthony Katsaris, brother of Jim Jones aide Maria Katsaris, was wounded in the chest. We got word that a temple member had grabbed the congressman, held a knife to his throat and told him he was going to slit it. This is really crazy, he recalls thinking. 'In an hour, that promise was broken.'. Though I couldn't see over the tall brush, I could hear the shots become less frequent. But in 1973, John's oldest brother and a sister, along with six other California college students, quit the church and became its enemies. Jim Jones himself did not drink the poison. Best Answer. 'Everyone participated in it and because of that, it went as far as it did,' she said. Rebelling, they refused Jones' order to come back. Cobb lost 11 relatives that day, including his mother, youngest brother and four sisters. 'Naaah.' 'People ask, 'How can you ever be proud of your father?'' And as the years go on, Stephan is still willing to talk about his connection to one of the biggest tragedies in American history even as he tries to live a peaceful life far removed from Jonestown. But some lived. But mention "Jim Jones" and "Jonestown" and many people would make the connection. People were forced. I heard a few more shots and saw the tractor pull away. And he faked getting shot in Redwood Valley [California] when I was still pretty young, and we felt like we were in danger much of the time. "They say, 'Yeah.' How Twins Megan Rapinoe and Rachael Rapinoe are Breaking Barriers for the LGBTQ+ Community? Some have come to acknowledge that they helped enable Jim Jones to seize control over people drawn to his interracial church, socialist preaching and religious hucksterism. He is still elated by it. I stopped and listened. I found relief in the woods and rivers and creeks, and I got away as often as I could, but there was always a low-level anxiety that I only really can identify now.. When he was ordered to Georgetown to help with supply shipments, Smith said he concocted an escape plan: Ollie and other temple singers and dancers, he believed, would soon be sent to Georgetown to perform, and the family would flee to the U.S. Embassy. 'There were often thoughts of taking him out but I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing. Is Kristie Mewis Dating the Aussie Star Sam Kerr? "I mellowed out. But some lived. Of course, even if he wanted to forget Jonestown, his name was an ever-present reminder. Stephan ran to the U.S. Embassy and appealed for a helicopter to take him to the colony to try to stop the disaster, but no one listened. Stephan Jones says he can still remember his own terror the first time his father set off a Jonestown White Night. Many of his previous interviews echo what he discusses in Jonestown: The Women Behind The Massacre, but he has an intimate perspective to give when it comes to his father and mother, who both died during the event. File photo: Bodies of Peoples Temple mass suicide victims led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, November 1978. I would argue that even a lot of the good works that he wanted to do early on were an attempt to impress my mother and her family'. "I think I have a lot of the same tendencies he had. He dreams he is arguing with his father, arguing passionately, and although he knows his arguments are better, his father always wins. Stephan fought him, swore at him, obeyed him, contemplated killing him, argued with his mother about how to bring Jim Jones under control. ", Throughout the 40 years since the deaths at Jonestown, Stephan has been willing to give media interviews. As the visitors prepared to return to the U.S., Peoples Temple gunmen ambushed them on a remote jungle airstrip killing the congressman, Leo Ryan; three newsmen; and a church defector. " He smiles, imitates the sudden mask of disbelief. " Stephan may be reached at moreheart1@comcast.net. The temple really became my family, she said. (Actually, the deadly beverage that day might have been based on a cheaper imitation, Flavor Aid. Cobb lost 11 relatives that day, including his mother, youngest brother and four sisters. While working as a hospital orderly, Jones met Marceline Baldwin, a nursing student, and they married in 1949. 'It looks like trouble,' I said to Greg Robinson, but he kept on shooting pictures. I thought there were reasons for people to want to get us. She gives us the order that we were supposed to kill ourselves, Vilchez recalled. Hes 61 now. Being in Jonestown before Jim got there was the best thing in my life.. There were many photographs of the bodies, taken from various angles, in color and black and white, and in each photograph, as though defying the viewer even to believe the report of the camera, row upon row of clothed human backs lay swelling in the jungle damp. He was in Georgetown, Guyana on November 18, 1978 with the Jonestown Basketball Team. You don't tell God, "You're not going out of the house. Stephan Gandhi Joneswas the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. Stephan was around 17 years old when he moved to Jonestown in February 1977 to help build the compound. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. So the second thing is this whole idea of drinking the Kool-Aid thats such a prevalent saying. For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part he played in an idealistic group that imploded so terribly. She was the adoptive daughter of Rev. 1978. Stephan Jones believes his father must have killed himself: that he could not leave his own shooting to someone else. ', 'I argued with my Dad,' he said. Then, after a 1977 New West magazine expose of temple disciplinary beatings and other abuses, she was sent to Jonestown. mode: 'thumbnails-rr', And it was necessary in my own healing for me to find acceptance for him, understanding of him. So would the congressman and three others. Rep. Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, had come to the temple's agricultural project to determine whether the followers of Jones were free to leave the jungle settlement. In addition to writing the articles below, Stephan appeared as a speaker during the Griot Institute of African Studies lecture series entitled Jonestown: 35 Years Later at Bucknell University; his presentation appears on this page (scroll down the videos). 'There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. He played at school. You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. ". More than 300 Jonestown victims were children. Marceline and Jim had one biological child together, and Stephan Jones appears in Jonestown: The Women Behind The Massacre. In this Nov. 13, 2008 file photo, Stephan Jones, son of Rev. He says the congregation was full of elderly people, many of them hard-working black men and women who had given this minister everything they possessed. The reality was we were folks who could be counted on to stand up, he said. Mr. Jones -- his first name is pronounced Stephen; Marceline Jones spelled it Stephan to honour the memory of an adopted daughter, Stephanie, who died in a car accident -- claims to be. The picture, he recalls, was about hit men. But she wasn't in the truck and the men left. And when her 23-year-old sister joined, Jordan went to live with her at age 12. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. American soldiers who arrived discovered that beneath the layer of bodies was another layer, and yet another. He is charming. I try not to speak in terms of what I couldve done because I see no value in that.. This past year, she returned to long-overgrown Jonestown. Write by: . Stephans address on November 18, 2018 at the 40th Anniversary Memorial Service at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California is here. The phrase drinking the Kool-Aid, meaning to follow someone blindly, was born that day in Guyana. Ryan Seacrest, 48, is all smiles with stunning girlfriend Aubrey Paige, 25, as they enjoy Miami shopping trip, a day after it was announced he's being replaced on Live with Kelly and Ryan by Ripa's husband, Who needs Tinder when you've got Duolingo? As the larger plane landed, the temple truck, with several persons in the back, started to advance. Where the machine shop once stood, there was only rusty equipment. He dreams he is in a crowd, and his father is talking about suicide. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous. The people are elderly and he knows he must stop it, but he cannot make contact with them; they look at him as though from great distances. He dreams he sees the men and women he knew, older now, changed by the years. The woman sang as they coupled, and when Stephan Jones' mother told the boy she knew about it, she also told him--it is this he remembers as the crescendo of the betrayal--that his father had even described the song. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Even the few people that actually took the poison. "I don't care what you think of my father," Jones wrote in 2015. Patricia Parks had had her head shattered before her husband's eyes. His wife has learned at those moments to let him be. Official Sites. Stephanie was one of six victims in the car accident coming back from Cincinatti.Birth name: . Where the machine shop once stood, there was only rusty equipment. I wondered why it happened. John was attending a San Francisco high school when he was allowed to join his best friends in Jonestown. 'I believe that it was always a personal agenda for my father, and yes, there was a gradual shift in the balance. Then, with heart-stopping suddenness, the first shot was fired. So grew the young Stephan: the quiet witness steeped in rage. Jim Jones set off one of these panics every few weeks, sometimes keeping people awake all night as he shouted his warnings. But the entertainers stayed in Jonestown to entertain Ryan. He plays forward. Though it was a stalemate, the incident intensified an already strained situation. Meanwhile, the tractor, with several men in the trailer, rolled toward the terminal shack and halted a short distance away. Little Jimmy became part of their Rainbow Family of white, black, Korean-American and Native American children. The soldiers realized very quickly that the enemy wasnt waiting for them. Recent interviews with Stephan include: Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the World Can Still Learn From Him, by Moran Sharir, Haaretz, January 22, 2019. Which probably wasnt true. The guy you see in all the images. 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