Or it was before Dad showed up there. It was the first significant moment of disillusionment for many of Stephans brothers, and led to Tim approaching Stephan with talks of killing Jones. . The Joneses adopted a black baby in Indiana in 1960, and Jim gave the 10-week-old infant his own name. 1958 (October 5): The Joneses adopted two Korean children, Stephanie (b. He dreams he is in a crowd, and his father is talking about suicide. FILE - This Jan. 1976 photo shows the Rev. The film, directed and written, respectively, by Canadians Tim Wolochatiuk and Jason Sherman, airs on Vision TV on March 13, and Mr. Jones, who appears in the program, is lending it some of his promotional muscle this week in Toronto. (n.d.). . "We were all in all wonderful people who made big, big mistakes. Its not that easy (Reiterman 405). Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of Jim and Marceline Jones. In fact, he feels "obligated to do something well with the fact that I survived and I hope that I do. . Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. Stephan is looking for forgiveness for himself and his father. Everything to Know About the Love Life of a Social Media Influencer, Chase Landry of Swamp People Is a Father, According to His Alleged Relationship With Cheyenne Wheat, Exploring Pat McAfees Beautiful Wedding with Wife Samantha, Who Is Luke Braceys Girlfriend? FILE - In this Nov. 13, 2008 file photo, Stephan Jones, son of Rev. the whole thing he drove into people's minds for so long--I certainly don't mean to say that what happened was a sane act or that it was a good act, but--", Jones hesitates. He hasthree possible sons. Jones urged Marceline to ask Stephan to come home early, but he and the rest of the team stayed, enjoying their time (Reiterman 474). Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. It made it easy to find playmates, but there were also high expectations put on his shoulders as the son of the prophet. Most people were away at the time. Kristi Jones (1991 - present)( 3 children). It was he who dreamed up Jonestown, he who willed it into being, and he who brought it down: first, with the assassination of U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan and four others by temple members on a nearby airstrip on Nov. 18, 1978, then with the mass murders and suicides of hundreds, a horror that remains nearly unimaginable 40 years later. Stephan Gandhi Jones, DOB: 6/1/59 arrived JFKIA this date, aboard Pan Am flight 228 from Georgetown, Guyana. Yet, as he indicated in an interview yesterday, he's also loathe to disavow or ignore it. In the days before Ryans fact-finding mission to the settlement, the players were in Georgetown for a tourney with the Guyana national teams. Thats the only way youre gonna do it. After Ollie became pregnant, she was sent to Jonestown; Eugene remained behind. Stephan GandhiJones was away at a basketball game in Georgetown when his father,Jim Jones, ordered the Peoples Temple mass suicide in 1978 at a compound in Guyana, dubbed "Jonestown." People do things for him. 17. Reiterman, T., & Jacobs, J. He seemed to have had a difficult existence after what happened to his family. Plunged into a new world, those raised in the temple or who joined as teens lost the only life they knew: church, jobs, housing and most of all, family and friends. In an hour, that promise was broken.. We built a community out of nothing in four years, recalled Touchette, now a 65-year-old grandfather who has worked for a Miami hydraulics company for nearly 30 years. He claimed the media had done the late members of Peoples Temple a disservice by portraying Jones in such an overwhelmingly negative light, which made the members of Peoples Temple seem illogical for following him. Haaretz.com. This time in Stephans life was marked with pride, enthusiasm, and community. But after temple gunmen killed the congressman, three newsmen and a church defector on the Port Kaituma airstrip, Jones ordered a poisoned grape-flavored drink administered to children first. Vom Abt der Reichenau zum Weggefhrten des Kaisers. In California, he was steeped in temple life. ", Stephan Jones' lips draw back when he talks about his father; he looks for an instant like a cornered dog. To me, the ends justified the means, he said. The team decided to go to the Pegasus hotel where the Concerned Relatives were staying and get more information from them, defying Jones orders (Reiterman 523). His body was found with a gunshot wound in the head. We recommend you to check the complete list of Famous People born on 1 June. Getting to Know Irad Ortiz Jr.s Wife: What Does She Do? What we were calling the cause really was Jim, she said. By early 1978, Marceline was traveling back and forth between San Francisco and Jonestown, where she lived in her own private cottage near the center of the compound. "I wasn't there," he says. Maybe they saw no hope--because they didn't see themselves leaving, but they didn't want to go on with Jim Jones. Jim Jones and His People.. They don't normally believe it at first. The Jones rainbow family acted as a symbol of racial integration within the temple community (Reiterman 63). Jim Jones was cultivating his growing celebrity--elected officials visited the San Francisco temple, Mayor George Moscone had used temple members as campaign workers, and much was made of the 1976 photo that showed Jim Jones and Rosalynn Carter together during the Democratic Central Committee meeting in San Francisco. Among the films in which he appeared were Written in Blood (2018), The Peoples Advocate: The Life and Times of Charles R. Gary (2007), and The True Story of Charles R. Gary (2007). In October 1978, Jones began sleeping with nineteen-year-old Shanda James (Reiterman 455), though when she wrote him a note saying she wanted to be with someone else, Jones had her put in the ECU and drugged, to the great displeasure of many of the younger men. He was so lost to his narcissism. "I think he would be admitting in his own warped mind that he was not this great revolutionary he had tried to build himself up to be . You want a revolution. He was 18 and running a temple construction crew when the church sanctioned his marriage to a talented 16-year-old singer, Ollie Wideman. His biggest regrets revolve around the teams refusal to return to Jonestown. The picture, he recalls, was about hit men. When his mother eventually moved to Jonestown, he bonded with her over their anger toward Jim Jones (Reiterman 401). 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. "The temple was still my only life, and I didn't really see any alternative to it," he says. Some of the original settlers, included Stephan, resented the new arrivals who second-guessed their work (Reiterman 348). . "I dont care what you think of his ancestor or progeny. It's like my hurt for them, or my missing them, is the only thing I have left of them." One day, when she was in high school, she came home and told her parents that her religion class had discussed Peoples Temple; only then did her father share the story of how his family was nearly wiped out. "I don't know. Copyright 2017-2018 Free Articles by ecelebritymirror.com, All rights reserved. ", Eventually, he "got so sick of himself and hurting others" that he joined Alcoholics Anonymous and developed a strong attachment to its famous 12-step program. In 1959, they adopted a six-year-old girl, while in June, they had their only biological child, which they named Stephan Gandhi Jones. Wiki, Age, Height, Wife, Net Worth, Ethnicity, Career, Renee Raducanu- All About The Mother Of Emma Raducanu, Denny Siregar- Wiki, Age, Girlfriend, Net Worth, Height, Career, How much is Tom Austen Net Worth 2023? That way no one else would want to live. When asked what Stephan wished people would take away from the Jonestown tragedy, he stated: Be aware of this message that was prevalent in the temple: The end justifies the means. And I see that throughout society. He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks about his father, but they also have heard him speak lovingly of the man who taught him compassion and other virtues. A vegetarian with an apparent fondness for corduroys and earth-toned jackets, the devoted father of three daughters and the manager of a commercial office-furniture business in Marin County, he peppers his conversation with words like "healing" and "selflessness" and "service. Stephan responded: This is funny. "I just felt like this was all they had," he says. In the aftermath, he built a new life. Those raised in the temple or who joined as teens lost the only life they knew. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. November 29, 2022 by cyfrows. He is married to his wife Kristi Jones since 1991. ", Mr. Jones says he hasn't "mourned [his]father's death, but I've certainly come to understand, forgive and to love him. He imagines the guards with guns, and the sky clouding over, and the air suddenly wild with fear, and the sight of the children. Hes never remarried, and Martin Luther Smith was his only child. There have been things Ive wanted to do (Reiterman 454). 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. Being in Jonestown before Jim got there was the best thing in my life.. Suggest an alternative. ", Certainly the term could apply to the basketball tournament in which he and five or six other young men from Jonestown played in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana, just days before the massacre. "There was always that guilt fed to you by my father that kept you in check, kept you thinking, 'Maybe I'm wrong'--the guilt for being selfish and questioning this.". "I would have been a traitor to the greatest cause there ever was . Dozens of Peoples Temple members in Guyana survived the mass suicides and murders of more than 900 because they had slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away Nov. 18, 1978. 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