Connie Jene Jones: Keeping Legacy Alive

As a child, Connie Jene Jones watched and helped her grandmother cook meals and pass out clothes to the poor every day--and later avoided questions about whether she would carry on this work someday.

It was, she said, too much responsibility, too great a task. Her grandmother, Annie Mae Tripp, before her death in 1986, was feeding about 400 people a day at the Southwest Community Center that she founded in Santa Ana.

Her grandmother would always ask Jones and her husband if Jones would stay there if she died. “I always said, ‘No way.’ I didn’t want to be an executive director. That has so much responsibility. There is so much weight on those words.”

Jones, 38, should know. For four years now, she has continued her grandmother’s work as director at Southwest Community Center.

Three times a week, the small, 2,000-square-foot center at the corner of Forest and 2nd streets is open by 10 a.m. Men and women with children and babies have lined up outside, waiting for baskets of food and clothing, which volunteers will hand out.

In less than two hours, the men and women will form a second line at the center’s back door for a lunch to be eaten outside on wooden tables and benches.

Three full-time employees and volunteers run the center, where programs include stop-smoking classes and help with citizenship papers.

But the food stored on the center’s back-room shelves is its lifeblood.

“They get their black-eyed peas and ham on New Year’s. They get their Christmas dinner, their Thanksgiving meal,” Jones said.

The government helps pay for some of the food programs, but funding from the United Way and other private donations from churches and foundations also help her meet the center’s $138,000 budget, Jones said.

Sometimes the clients become belligerent, she said, and always there are too many of them to help.

“I’ve learned to say, ‘I’m gone,’ ” when the pressures at the center are too great, she said.

A trustee and member of the choir at Second Baptist Church, Jones finds her release in religion. It is there, too, that the mother of three plus a foster son finds her renewal for community work. Twice a year, Jones attends a church women’s conference, where her work at the center often is lauded.

“The times you do get away and see someone who appreciates what you do--that kind of brings you back,” Jones said.

By her death, Jones said, her grandmother, who worked for 17 years at the center, had become more like a sister, and often called Jones that.

She said her grandmother would be “satisfied” with the work going on today at the center, where her legacy provides inspiration.

“That’s what keeps us going,” Jones said. “When your aunt or grandmother put so much into building something, you don’t let it fall.”