If you’ve ever attended a civic function on the Eastern Shore, you’ve probably run into Skip Jones. He may be the most civic-minded man I know. His interests run wide and deep. He is also an ‘Old Salt’, an endearing term for someone who knows their way around the waterfront.

I wanted to do this story on Skip because he is an important element of what makes the Scenic 98 Coastal area so special. He’s a quiet, humble guy who is involved in everything that helps build community. His interests are varied, with so much history stored from living a rich life, being curious, and wanting to be involved. He is an “Old Salt” worth his weight in gold.

Skip’s mind is thoughtful and full of stories about the Scenic 98 Coastal area. And don’t speak ill of anyone in his presence. It’s surely a friend or a relative! Born in 1942 and raised in Mobile, he spent his preteen years with his cousin, T.K. (Jack) Jackson, at their grandparents’ home in Point Clear, just South of Bailey’s Creek. 

He recalls that he and T.K. spent hours climbing in and out of a 14-foot wooden rowboat with an early outboard motor with “opposing cylinders” that was tied to a piling, and pulling seine nets with T.K. for bait fish. His father was out in this boat one day, hit a wake, and was thrown out. The water was shallow, and the boat circled his father while he stood there until the engine finally ran out of gas.

Skip fondly remembers spending time with the Harris neighbor boys, Ben, John, and Russell. They taught him how to sail in an old “Cat Boat.” “It was my first sailing experience. They told me my job was to fill the centerboard with water until it was full. I bailed and bailed, and it would never fill up. Of course, all the water I poured in was going right back into the bay. I finally caught on when they started laughing. It was a rite of passage and in good fun.” Skip went on to own and sail other boats, from a Sunfish to a beautiful 37-foot canoe-stern cutter.  He is a veteran of several trips across the Gulf of Mexico.

In 1955, Skip’s grandfather purchased property and built a ‘beach shack’ at Romar Beach in what is now the Orange Beach area (there was no Orange Beach municipality at the time). Romar was named after the two first settlers’ family names, Roche and Martin. This is where Skip, his mother, and two sisters would spend their summers during his teenage years, with his father coming down each weekend. There was no direct road to the property, and Skip says they would cut through the swamp from Canal Road to the beach. 

In those days, Highway 59 ended where the Hangout sits today. There was a back road to Gulf State Park, but you couldn’t get to Perdido Pass, which runs between Alabama and Florida. Governor Jim Folsom’s state highway director built a house at Alabama Point and had the road built so he could get to it. He also wanted a bridge built to access Perdido Key and Pensacola. Before the road, Skip and his father got to the point on the beach in an old army jeep, stopping along the way to cast for speckled trout in deep holes.

“After the road was built, Governor Folsom approached the Florida governor about sharing the cost of building the bridge at Perdido Pass. The Florida governor didn’t want to spend the money, so he ceded the property from the Florida line to the Flora-Bama, including Ono Island, to Alabama for free, and Alabama paid for the bridge. The Flora-Bama is where the Alabama-Florida line is today, thus the name.”

After graduating from UMS in Mobile, Skip attended Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. He earned a degree in Business Management with a minor in Accounting and was hired by Price Waterhouse in Washington, DC. “It was the largest major accounting firm in the country with an impressive client list, especially in the nation’s capital. This included the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, IBM, and the Washington Post, to name a few.”

He recalls the Price Waterhouse CEO, Ed Herz, taking him to a meeting of U.S. Senators to discuss the firm reviewing their use of some funds. ”As the meeting went on, Mr. Herz didn’t say a word. When the meeting concluded, one of the senators commented, “You haven’t said anything, Mr Herz.” “That’s right,” he replied, and we left the meeting. On the way out of the U.S. Capitol Building, Mr. Herz turned to me and said, “It doesn’t sound like anything we want to be involved in.”

In another indelible moment, Congress instructed Price Waterhouse to perform an audit on the Teamsters Union. These were the days of Jimmy Hoffa. Skip recalls that he and Mr. Herz were met at Teamsters headquarters by two “heavies,” and told, rather threateningly, “Mr. Hoffa can’t see you today.” The next visit was with police escorts. He also remembers walking by the White House and seeing Lyndon Johnson and a visitor on the lawn playing with a dog. Skip reflects, “That seems very unusual now, but at the time, it seemed normal.”

After 6 years in Washington, Skip returned to Mobile. His grandfather owned a “bunker business” called Petroleum Storage Company. It was a marine fuel distributor and operated a terminal on the Mobile River at the State Docks for refueling ships. He tells me about the most dramatic thing that happened on the waterfront.

“We also had a contract with the U.S. Navy to provide special fuel to the aircraft carrier, USS Lexington, in Pensacola. The Navy would ship the fuel to our terminal, and we’d barge it to Pensacola as needed. One night, when we were receiving fuel from a Navy tanker, I got a call from our supervisor telling me something wasn’t right. He told me they’d been pumping for hours, but our terminal was showing only a small amount of fuel coming in.” 

Skip rushed to the terminal to see what was going on. It turns out the pipeline from the ship had ruptured, and over 10,000 gallons of Navy fuel had been dumped into the Mobile River. “It was bad,” he says. “Fortunately, the north wind had pushed most of the fuel into the slip and was somewhat contained, but it shut down the River, and it took a couple of weeks to clean it all up. The lawsuits that were filed were quickly settled by the U.S. government. I believe this was the first major oil spill in the United States.” 

The bunker business was sold to Belcher Oil Company of Miami, and Skip stayed on for a couple of years to run the business. When the business sold again, he decided to do something he really enjoyed, and in 1977 got into the cabinet-making business. “I realized quickly that I didn’t know what I was doing and joined forces with Sedge Sturges. It turned out, he didn’t know much more than I did.”

Even so, business was soon booming, and they needed help. “I went to the County employment office and met Joe Castronova, one of the smartest men I’ve ever been around.” Joe figured out the cabinet-making business in short order. After about three years, Skip decided he should do something different and sold the business. He and Joe both bought motorcycles and rode throughout the South. Skip purchased his BMW from an old Baptist minister in Prichard. 

“Joe could do anything. Before he joined us, he had become an expert photographic processor.  He then learned how to take the bikes apart and put them back together. During this time, he also learned about computers. He eventually went to work for the Post Office, overseeing their IT department in Mobile. I told him, “You don’t know anything about computers.” He said, “Maybe not, but apparently, I know more than anyone else who applied for the job.”

Always curious about how things work, Skip tells me that as a teenager, he rebuilt a Model A Ford Roadster and installed a Chevy V-8 engine. As an adult, Skip bought a 1936 Biloxi Lugger wooden boat and restored it. “It was the most educational and satisfying thing I’ve ever done.” It was also the longest sustained, concentrated project in which he has been involved, he tells me.

“I sold the boat a few years ago after owning it for 16 years. The primary reason, I physically couldn’t do the work I used to do. If you work on a boat, you have to be on your hands and knees for more than 20 minutes at a time.” He sold the Dolores Catherine, named after the original owners' two daughters, to a local man who knew about the boat before Skip. The new owner has two boys and has turned out to be the ideal successor.

“I had a marine survey done, and knew that it needed about $15,000 in repair work to bring it up to speed. I sold it to Daniel Hackberry for the appraised price, less the $15,000 it needed to be fixed  up.” This spring, Daniel entered the Dolores Catherine in the Biloxi Wooden Boat Show, where it won six awards: Best in Show, Oldest in Show, Captain’s Choice, People’s Choice, and Roughest Trip to get to the Show.”

Skip tells me that owning and rehabbing the Delores  Catherine was a labor of love, and a money pit. “They were going to break it up and sell it for parts before I bought it.” He talks about the Biloxi Maritime and Seafood Industry Museum, which organizes the Biloxi show, and how they successfully rebuilt the museum after it was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. 

After the cabinet business, Skip began building custom homes in 1995. The late Chris Leigh helped him get permitted out of the gate, and he built Winston Groom (Forrest Gump) and his wife, Anne Clinton’s, home. It was featured in Architectural Digest and also in Mobile Bay Monthly. “The notoriety was certainly due to Winston’s accomplishments, not mine”, says Skip. 

Skip recalls that Winston was quoted in one of the publications as saying, “Skip Jones is the smartest person I know.” When questioned about it by Skip, Winston told him, “I don’t remember saying that, but if I did, I must have been drunk!”

After  29 years in the home building business, Skip has built around 50 custom homes, restored several in Fairhope, and, among other properties, built 8 beautiful condos in Fairhope near the bluff. “We sold them as fast as we could build them.” His first build was on property his mother left him in Daphne, and he has a project in Daphne under construction today. “It costs a lot more money to build a home these days,” he says.

A few years back, at his 40th Washington and Lee class reunion, Skip was given a copy of the New York Times classified ads section as an award because, “I’d had more jobs than anyone. I didn’t tell you that I was a stockbroker for ten years, and I sold insurance briefly, too.” This led to a discussion about his civic involvement.

Skip is a charter member of the Point Clear Rotary Club, has been on the Baldwin County Architectural Review Board for 6 years, and has served on the City of Fairhope Tree Committee and the Fairhope Harbor Board for several years. He was also president of the Eastern Shore Literacy Council. Every year, at the Fairhope Arbor Day Celebration, as a Tree Committee member, he reads the poem, Trees by Joyce Kilmer. “Interestingly, it’s a female name, but a man wrote it. Joyce Kilmer was a soldier and was killed in WW I,” he says.

Skip has been on the Friends of the Fairhope Library board for the past year, but his interest in the writing arts goes way back. “The old pecan processing plant sat where the Fairhope Library sits now. There was a 1920 cottage at the back of the property that was going to be torn down. Sonny Brewer and a few friends, including Skip, Martin Lanaux, Mac  Walcott, and Jim Gilbert, thought it should be saved.

They made up a name and went to the City Council, saying they should restore the building as the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts. The Council said it was too much of a liability, so the group approached author Rick Bragg, who is a friend (and, at the time, a reporter for the New York Times), and asked for his support. They approached the Council again and mentioned that Rick Bragg had become aware of the Council’s position and might write about it in the New York Times. The project was approved. (Parts of this story were confirmed by both Sonny and Rick.)

$40,000 was raised for the renovation, and the Cottage was named Wolff Cottage in honor of Betty Joe Wolff, founder of Page & Palette and godmother of the literary community in Fairhope.  Rick Bragg showed up as the first writer in residence and encountered Skip on his hands and knees working in the bathroom. Rick commented, “I heard you were snooty, but if you’re cleaning my bathroom, I guess you’re okay.”  In the 18 years since then, the Fairhope Center for the Writing Arts has had over 100 writers stay as guests in the Cottage.

Skip served as the Chairman of the LA (Lower Alabama) Songwriters Festival for several years. Held at the American Legion, Post 199, He describes bringing in interesting musicians from all over the United States to Fairhope. “Charles and Evan Davis of Leavin’ Brothers fame knew a lot of the songwriters from their time in Nashville.” We laugh at a couple of the Leavin’ Brothers’ lyrics and song titles, It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother, and It Takes Liquor to Like Her. 

I asked if he had considered writing all these stories and publishing a book. “Winston Groom encouraged me to write my stories. I even took a writing course at South Alabama. I started a writing project describing my boat restoration about 10 years ago, but got bogged down, and I suggested to Rick Bragg that he write it. He said no, but, “If you write it, I’ll offer it to Garden & Gun.” I guess I need to pick that back up.

In closing our visit, I asked him about the changes in Fairhope he’s seen over the years. Is it different? “I get asked that a lot by new people moving here and people who have lived here forever. There are a lot more people today, but I think that the spirit of Fairhope is still the same.” 

What worries you the most, I ask? “Getting run over by a Range Rover,” he laughs.