Robert Wesley Jones (at different times Bobby or Bob Jones or B.J.) was born in Boston on July 24, 1929, but within days was on Martha’s Vineyard, at his grandparents’ house on Pacific avenue in Oak Bluffs. His grandmother, Carolyn, was an extraordinary woman in her own right, not least because she took on the care of Robert and his sister Jackie after their mother died very young (Jackie was eight and Robert was four). John Wesley Jones married Ruth Mary Carmen Felix Andrade when Robert was on the brink of his teens, and she took loving care of them also, giving them an older sister, Ruth.

Robert was happy to be Bobby as a child and Bob into early middle age, but then from some 40 years ago, wanted to be addressed as Robert, though it was also fine for anyone who knew him at the time he was Bobby or Bob to go on calling him the version of his name they knew long ago. Somehow this mostly worked. Names are important (especially those we give ourselves) and he knew exactly what he was doing — embracing different eras of his long and rich life.

The Vineyard was a healing place, where Robert and Jackie could just be kids and have wonderful summers. His aunt, the celebrated artist Lois Mailou Jones, was an important presence on the Vineyard, where she liked to rent a small cabin in Menemsha and paint all summer. The Jones family at one time rented a duplex with the Wests (Dorothy’s family). The Teixeira siblings and Charity Randolph and Noni Coleman were close friends, as well as the Shearer family — especially Richard (Sookie) Dixon and Benny Ashburn. Adam Clayton Powell taught both his son Preston and Robert to sail a catboat. There are many wonderful stories about those days, from childhood to young adulthood.

The idyll of Vineyard summers was brutally interrupted by Robert’s war service in Korea as a Marine (in intelligence, but on the front line for 15 months, wounded in action). After Korea, he returned to the East Coast, completed an undergraduate degree at New York University and then went on to law school. His career took him into city government and then real estate appraisal and counseling. He founded a successful firm, Robert W. Jones and Associates, focused on real estate in New York city. He served on many boards over the years, perhaps most notably with Tougaloo College in Mississippi as a trustee for a quarter of a century. He became the first African American chairman of Tougaloo’s board, eventually retiring as chairman emeritus.

But through his most active and productive working years, he always connected with the Vineyard. Pacific avenue was the site of memorable parties to celebrate the adjacent July birthdays of Robert and his brother in law, Albert (Al) Holland. His two children from his first marriage, Todd and Stacy, very much enjoyed the Island along with their cousins Laurence and Carol, his sister Jackie’s children. Later, for quite some years, he preferred boating to a landlocked summer, though he always put into port in Oak Bluffs for a time and joined the extended family.

By the mid-1990s, he had sold his last, beloved boat, Companion, and he and I embarked on the major project of restoring the old homestead on Pacific avenue from its extensive dilapidation; whole Vineyard summers with family and friends resumed. Now we had three children: Todd, Stacy, and our younger son Austin, who was growing up during the summers on the Vineyard. In 1998, Robert and I moved to Olde Schoolhouse Village, to a larger, younger house with a far more convenient layout for a man already on the brink of his 70s. Donald and Jodi Ben David are close neighbors, resuming a connection to the Ben David family that started in Robert’s Island childhood.

He became a committed member of the Union Chapel community, where we enjoyed renewing connections from all over the U.S. His middle name Wesley (the same as his father’s) reflects Caroline Jones’s strong Methodism, which led her to be strongly engaged in raising funds for the cross above the Tabernacle. Robert was gently spiritual, rather than strictly religious, and loved the variety as much as the excellence of Union Chapel’s preachers.

He enjoyed rituals of summer: the first lobster on the still-chilly June Menemsha beach, clams at Larsen’s (where Robert and his father would routinely and with enormous pleasure down a dozen each), birthdays at the house or at favorite restaurants, the trip to the post office for mail and to see people in the square outside. He loved connecting with family on the Island — an old friend introduced him to a long-lost cousin a few years ago and there was the extended family (Jones’s, Hollands and Lythcotts). He was a sun baby, born in high summer; he always enjoyed a sunny beach and even the sharply awakening Massachusetts sea. His beloved Cadillac, Betsy, always provoked waves and admiring comments as he drove around the Island, into Oak Bluffs and to the beach. He had her for almost 40 years. It was a fine treat to be taken up-Island in Betsy, and visitors loved it. Those who remembered his father’s love of large old cars in the Vineyard marked the continuity.

We celebrated his 80th birthday with a day full of joyful surprises — a lunch with family (many of whom made significant journeys) and an end of day party for many more. It was bittersweet as we had lost Stacy, our adored and beautiful daughter, the year before, and we held the last memory of her in the garden just the summer before. We have a special memorial space for her at the house, but it can only nibble at the edges of a loss which devastated all of us, but especially Robert, for no one should have to bury a child. From then on, his aging was faster, and his health increasingly more frail. Last summer he had to cope with restricted mobility, but we were still on the Vineyard from late June until late August.

He fought his last illness with constant resilience, determination and grace, in sum great courage. His long ordeal ended in peace, in my arms as he wanted, on July 21 at 9 a.m. in New York city, three days short of his 86th birthday. On that day, Friday July 24, he was cremated after a ceremony created and carried out by family members in accordance with his wishes. It included some of his favorite music, both sacred and secular and a psalm and a passage from Rainer Maria Rilke (his mantra in adult life) read by our two oldest grandchildren, Taylor and Tristan. Powerful and apt prayers and thoughts in English, Yoruba and Latin were delivered by Robert’s nephew, Michael Adeyemi Lythcott. The formal conclusion was the arrival of a Marine honor guard, Taps and the folding and presentation of the American flag to mark Robert’s service to his country. Afterwards, at home, again according to his wishes, he was toasted for his birthday and stories were told. Acknowledging he is now an ancestor, we were asked to speak aloud our mother’s and father’s family names, so all those many ancestors were listening. Robert was the last elder of his generation, so the next generation was reminded that it is now their turn to grow into being the next cohort of elders of our wonderfully diverse, richly gifted clan. He will be a very hard act to follow.

Donations in his memory may be sent to the MJHS Foundation, 6323 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 11220.

We are very thankful for all those who have expressed love and supported us during the long battle of the past few months and who have been sensitive, generous and kind during the past week since his death. The family hopes to celebrate Robert in various venues during the next year, bringing together family and friends in the U.S., U.K., the Caribbean, France, Germany and Canada. We should of course remember that Robert’s spirit will always be with us, wherever we are — but in a very special way on Martha’s Vineyard.

Elaine Savory Jones, wife of the late Robert Jones, teaches at New School University in New York city and lives in New York and Oak Bluffs.