Bob Jones III - Biography

Biography

Born in Cleveland, Tennessee, Jones moved with his family to Greenville, South Carolina in 1947 when Bob Jones College built a new campus and became Bob Jones University. Because his father was a connoisseur of the arts, Jones III early visited Europe and the Levant on his father's summer tours. As a teenager he was given minor roles in campus Shakespeare performances and a major role in the film version of his father's novel Wine of Morning. Likewise, as the son and grandson of well-known fundamentalists, Jones III met many politicians and notable preachers in his youth.

At fifteen, his father rusticated him to a summer camp sponsored by Ernest Reveal, a BJU board member and the founder of the Evansville Rescue Mission, where Jones preached and otherwise participated in the camp's evangelistic ministry to lower-class children from the Evansville area. Jones credited this experience with having had a significant impact on his later career.

Jones completed his bachelor of arts (1959) and master of arts (1961) in speech from Bob Jones University and took additional courses in speech and drama at Northwestern University and New York University. He also received honorary degrees from two small Bible schools and a seminary.

Although less intellectually gifted than his father, Jones III did excel academically. Unlike his father, though, Jones III also developed an interest in athletics—basketball as a young man, and later skiing, hunting and other outdoor sports. He enjoyed flying and even considered a military career.

Nevertheless, by the end of his undergraduate years, Jones believed that he had been called to “help perpetuate the ideals and standards” of the school that his grandfather had founded. He served as a teaching assistant in the speech department and then as a dormitory supervisor. Between 1961 and 1971, his father provided a growing administrative role in the University, including preaching for campus services. He also accepted an increasing number of off-campus speaking invitations.

Again, unlike his father, Jones III became genuinely interested in the mechanics of university administration, although his training for his college presidency was, like his father's, informal at best. To help with business judgments, Jones eventually appointed a personal friend and former businessman, Bob Wood, as vice president. Rather shy and "reticent to initiate conversations with strangers", Jones was also a highly competitive, 'Type A' personality, who regularly worked sixteen hours a day during his presidency.

Jones inherited the presidency of Bob Jones University as its enrollment continued to climb but also as the school began to face the opposition of the federal government to its racial policies. During the early 1980s, Jones was frequently interviewed by the media, and he presented the position of the University—as a matter of First Amendment rights—to the best of his considerable ability. Nevertheless, Jones had difficulty finding a route of escape from the positions on race that had been adopted by his predecessors during the period of segregation in the early twentieth-century South and which he himself had endorsed in his youth.

Jones is married to Beneth Peters Jones, an author and seminar speaker, whom he had gotten to know when she played Roxane to his Christian in a campus performance of Cyrano de Bergerac. They have three children. His younger son, Stephen Jones, replaced him as president of BJU in May 2005 when Jones III took the title, "Chancellor."

Jones III remains chairman of the International Testimony to an Infallible Bible and chairman of the board of directors of the Bob Jones University Museum & Gallery. He continues a demanding travel and speaking schedule.