Known by friends as Jerry or “Big Jer,” the San Marcos resident was 82 when he died Oct. 3 after contracting COVID-19. He left behind his daughters, Linda in Encinitas, Jill Jones in San Marcos, Jennifer Newman in Arizona, son Chad Bloodworth in South Carolina and nine grandchildren.
Jones was born in Detroit and joined the Navy in 1957, serving two years before returning to Detroit to work at Western Electric. He and his family moved to Indiana in the mid-1970s when Jones took a job at Foremost Insurance before starting a long career selling chiropractic equipment.
He married Jane Bloodworth in 1985 after a divorce from his first wife, Penny Jones. The couple moved to Charlotte, S.C., following Jones’ retirement in 2005.
Bloodworth’s career at an airline made travel affordable, and the couple took many trips to Europe and loved to explore old castles and other sights, Goldsmith said. He especially loved cruises, and she fondly remembers one aboard a Disney cruise ship the family took with eight grandchildren.
Their time together was tragically cut short when Bloodworth died of cancer in 2012. Jones moved to Phoenix to be closer to his daughter Jennifer in 2015, but moved to the cooler climate of San Marcos the following year to be near his other daughters.