Bouquets of violet-colored daisies and delicate red roses adorned Betty Jean Jones' office door this weekend paying tribute to the accomplished 47-year-old associate Rackham dean and theatre professor who passed away in Thursday night's plane crash.
Jones was travelling from Cincinnati to Detroit Metropolitan Airport aboard Comair flight 3272 when the plane went down Thursday afternoon in Raisinville Township, about 30 miles south of Ann Arbor. The 26 passengers and three crew members aboard were killed.
Students and colleagues of Jones' paint a portrait of a talented, determined woman of great integrity and a warm manner, whose zeal for life was almost contagious.
"She was smart and tough and she was above all joyous," said Machree Robinson, an assistant Rackham dean who worked with Jones for a year and a half.
"She was so well liked by everyone. Everyone liked her," said her father, Silas Jones, of Albany, Ga.
Jones was returning from the Senior Theatre USA Conference in Las Vegas, which she attended with her father, who is 75. She and her father flew back to Atlanta before Jones got on a Cincinnati-bound plane, which was her connection to Detroit.
In the Frieze Building and in her office Friday, co-workers and students gathered to try and sort out feelings of overwhelming grief and disbelief.
Mark Gmazel, a School of Music junior who worked with Jones, said her passion for theatre was obvious. "She believed in the mystery of theatre ... like it's a religious experience," he said.
One administrative assistant described an atmosphere of shock. Many in the dean's office were given the day off. A blunt orange flier posted on the doors of theatre classrooms in the Frieze Building notified students that classes were cancelled.
Silas Jones remembered well the last exchange he had with his daughter, when they separated at the Atlanta airport.
"As we got off the plane ... she said, 'Daddy I will call you when you get home. I will beat you home.' And I said, 'OK, baby,'" Jones' father said.
Jones' father said he had to take another flight from the Atlanta area to his home, which was delayed for 40 minutes. When he arrived home, he was sure she had beat him home as she said she would. "When I got home, I said, 'I know she done called me three or four times,'" Jones said.
Later that evening, after Silas Jones tried unsuccessfully to call his daughter, he received a disturbing phone call from an official at Detroit Metro Airport. "They said, 'Do you have a daughter named Betty Jean?' She said, 'I hate to tell you this. Your daughter was on that flight. Nobody survived.' I froze,"
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