{"id":13871,"date":"2019-07-01T17:49:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T21:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/?p=13871"},"modified":"2022-02-23T13:25:40","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T18:25:40","slug":"farewell-to-titan-great-petey-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/?p=13871","title":{"rendered":"Farewell to Titan Great Petey Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

T.C.Williams\u2019 1971 Titan football champion Petey Jones passed Monday.<\/p>\n

Jones, who was a member of the team immortalized in the Disney movie Remember the Titans<\/em>, never left ACPS – working as a security officer for nearly 30 years until he retired last year. He will be remembered for his community activism and for being a part of the 1971 championship football team that helped bring a divided Alexandria together.<\/p>\n

T.C.\u2019s Principal, Pete Balas said Jones was a Titan in the truest sense of the word.<\/p>\n

He devoted much of his life to T.C. Williams High School and formed many great relationships with staff and students. He inspired and guided our students with compassion, integrity and kindness. I was always astounded when visitors came to T.C. to see the school memorialized in Hollywood history and had time to interact with Petey to talk about our school and its rich history. Petey was always generous with his time and wisdom with our guests, often leaving them in tears of emotion and joy.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jones had been the starting fullback on George Washington High School\u2019s football team and starting point guard on the basketball team, but in 1971 his school along with Francis C. Hammond High School merged to form one Alexandria high school, T.C. Williams. Like the other varsity players, Jones spent his senior year at T.C. trying to regain his claim as a dominant player. Jones said rivals from three high schools came together to win that year and, in so doing, brought a racially divided city together along with them.<\/p>\n

It will be hard to hear, \u201cAin\u2019t No Mountain High Enough,\u201d without thinking of Jones who credited music, and that song in particular, with bringing his white and black team mates together that year. ACPS interviewed Jones in October 2018 <\/a>where he shared his experiences as a Titan and sang a bit for us.<\/p>\n

A lot of great friends developed from this team, both black and white,\u201d Jones said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jones told local reporters last year, that the story of equity and justice have moved on from just black and white to include the world. \u201cBack then, everything was black and white. Now, you\u2019ve got kids coming from all over the world. The big difference between us is\u2026 they\u2019ve got more things to deal with than we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

T.C. Williams, where Jones worked, has students from 114 countries that speak 119 languages.<\/p>\n

This week Jones\u2019 story and the topic of equity became a national discussion when the story was taken up by NBC\u2019s Today Show<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Petey’s\u00a0 Homegoing Service will be held at Bethlehem Baptist Church, 7836 Fordson Road, Alexandria, VA, on Friday, July 12<\/span>, 2019. The viewing will start at 10 a.m. and the funeral at 11:30 a.m.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
In lieu of flowers, his family is asking for donations to the \u201971 Original Titans Scholarship Fund: www.71originaltitans.com<\/a><\/span>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
Please take time to watch the video of Petey talking about his life experiences<\/a> made when he retired last year. This is a small reflection of the inspirational person he was.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

T.C. Williams\u2019 1971 Titan football champion Petey Jones passed Monday.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":10628,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3,40,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acps","category-achs","category-alumni-profile","category-video"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-23 00:39:32","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13871"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18396,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13871\/revisions\/18396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acpsk12.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}