Joan ""Jo"" C. Jones

Joan McCauley Jones: Sweetheart Wife, Mother, Nana, Teacher and Friend to All Joan McCauley Jones of Gleneagles Village, Highlands Ranch passed away in home hospice in the family residence on June 22, 2017. She had been ill for several months. Cecilia McCauley Jones (always called JoAnne by her family and old friends) was born to Lyle McCauley and Ida Ryan on June 18, 1930 in Mason City, Iowa. The home in which she lived for over twenty years on the eleven hundredth block of North Harrison was home to the McCauley family for over sixty years. Joanne (called Jo by her husband and others after 1951) attended Holy Family School from kindergarten through high school graduation in 1948. She graduated from Mason City Junior College and the University of Northern Iowa with a Bachelor's degree in Elementary Education with honors. She completed advanced graduate work in Reading Diagnostics at Michigan State University. She had selected elementary school teaching as her life's work from her grade school days when the good Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary supported those hopes and dreams. Her education, love of teaching and experience supported her successful and fulfilling teaching years in Finchford, Cedar Falls and Strawberry Point, Iowa and her supervisory roles as a reading specialist in Lansing and East Lansing, Michigan. Jo left teaching to become a full-time Mom when her children were born. The beloved children came from a marriage to Darrell G. Jones of Mason City, Iowa in 1951. There are three children: Scott (Narda) Jones of Evansville, IN, Karen Jones and Lee Ann (Matt) Smith of Littleton, CO. The four wonderful grandchildren are Kaitlyn and Allison Bohus and Jake and Alec Smith. Beloved grandson Ryan Bohus passed away at age twenty-two in 2015. Jo and Darrell moved to Colorado following his retirement in 1997 from Western Michigan University to be close to family. They chose Gleneagles Village after owning a down-town condominium while still living in Michigan and after an exhaustive search for a permanent and final home. Moving to Colorado was one of the wisest and most significant decisions they had made and was the constant refrain of both Joan and husband Darrell. They had the pleasure and joy of second-phase lives as they joined the family circles of their daughters Karen and Lee Ann and gained the love and genuine need that comes with the identifiers ""Nana and Papa."" Jo's husband Darrell was Dean of the College of Business, Western Michigan University for thirty years. It was at Western Michigan where Jo really became involved in the college, university and community. She was an active hostess for the college during crucial fund-raising years that saw two significant buildings built from gift money and she went beyond that to twice serve as President of University Dames. She was also a generous volunteer for Bronson Methodist Hospital. Just to ""get-out-of-house"" she worked for several years in the 1980s for First of America and has laughed about a good-sized IRA she earned that she really did not need. It was about this time that Jo entered the world of the computer. Far before many of her friends, her curiosity drove her to enroll in computer classes at Kalamazoo Valley Community College and she became the advice-giver as family and friends ventured into Microsoft and Intel. Jo was preceded in death by her parents, Lyle and Ida, an older brother Joe, a younger brother Jay and a younger sister Karen. Jo was a master quilter, a superb antique refinisher, a dedicated genealogist, and an excellent bridge player. Her golf game was fun-filled friendship and ""so-so."" If you asked Jo whether she engaged in these activities because she loved the hobbies dearly or because she so enjoyed the friends involved with her there, the answer was always a nonresponsive ""uumm"" which signaled to those who knew and loved her that her motivation was balanced—as was she. She loved her hobbies and she loved being with friends; and that is why she has so many friends. A celebration of Jo's life will be held on Tuesday, June 27, 2017 at 2:30 p.m. at Horan & McConaty Family Chapel, 5303 East County Line Road, Centennial. Interment will be at Fort Logan National Cemetery. Please share memories of Jo and condolences with her family by signing the guestbook below.