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Guest of the Harvard Club of Boston at their annual dinner last night was Thomas P. Jones who retired at the first of this year after 28 years of service as manager of the club.
The portly, hale looking gentleman of 70, appears 50, and said yesterday that he was "sorry to be leaving his work, but that he supposed that it was time for a little rest." He hopes to write his memoirs, and go to Florida, one of the few places he has never been.
His long association with the Harvard Club began when the present building was first opened in 1912. At that time he was teaching "Domestic Economy" classes in Bar Harbor, Maine. Fearing that he might be getting stale in his subject, Jones decided to go back to active work for a year or two "to keep his hand in." The "year or two" stretched on to become 28 years.
Schooled Brides
Smiling, Jones recalled the classes he used to teach in Maine. "I had brides, brides to be, would be brides, and just plain women," said he. "In one of the classes the youngest was 12, and the oldest, 80. Neither of those two was a bride."
Determined at the age of 15 to become a doctor, Jones happened by pure chance to enter the work in which he passed his life. An errand brought him late one night to a party at which his uncle, a caterer, was in charge. That was in 1886. "I decided then and there," said Jones, "that I would work giving parties like that, and I am not sorry that I made the decision."
Busy in the years before the time he came to the Harvard Club, as well as after, Jones remembers the members of Cleveland's cabinet and the elder J. Pierpont Morgan, well.
Asked if he had ever seen Harvard, and the Yard, Jones came back: "Oh, yes, I know them well. Particularly after dark, when they are at their best. I courted my girl out there, you see."
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