ALUMNI
Accomplishing the
dream Alumnus Alfred Jones is ready to take flight
W
ith a ready smile and incessant confidence exuding from eyes stamped with years of wisdom and experience, Alfred Jones is the epitome of a “just do it” philosophy. At age 47, Jones’ go-getter attitude and acquired laser focus has resulted in his returning to Southwest to finish an associate degree (after a 19-year hiatus). His optimistic outlook also has allowed him to move up the ranks in various manufacturing roles while working at Hershey and has helped him secure his current position of maintenance planner for Mitsubishi. But that’s not all. Most recently, Jones obtained his pilot’s license and is on the road to becoming a commercial pilot, a lifelong dream he thought could never happen. Yet, having confidence and achieving success wasn’t always the case for Jones who was introverted and stuttered “a lot” early in his life. “Because of the stuttering, I mostly stuck to myself and always enjoyed tearing things apart and putting them back together. It was fun to figure out how things worked, but the process kind of drove my mother crazy,” Jones said. As a 1990 graduate of Sheffield High School, Jones studied to be an airplane mechanic through a vocational program that was provided by Tennessee Technology Center. After graduation, he continued on with the program, but eventually dropped out due to transportation issues. Needing a job, Jones found employment with Chuck Hutton Chevrolet where he began as an order puller/shipping clerk and quickly moved up the ranks to become a shipping supervisor. This job was a turning point. “I was good at figuring things out and was able to advance into a supervisory role at age 21. “As a supervisor, I got to know them by asking questions and listening,” Jones said. “Learned about their likes and dislikes so I could utilize their strengths. Seeing their success encouraged me, and I realized that I could do better and was going to stop accepting roadblocks,” he added. “Amazingly, this is the time
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when my stuttering just stopped. It was immediate and truly a miracle. I just kind of made up my mind that I was tired of the same ole, same ole.” Balancing time at the shop with a desire to better his life, Jones enrolled at Southwest in 1993, where he studied industrial engineering for one year. “I did really good until I got to calculus,” Jones said. “After the second semester with the same instructor, I was done with this and just quit going.” When college didn’t work out, Jones poured himself back into full-time work at Chuck Hutton where he received raises and promotions. “At the time, I thought making more money was great,” Jones said. “Looking back, I see I had an ‘I quit’ attitude and should have stuck with it.” Eleven years out from high school and after an initial stab at studying aeronautics, Jones never lost the itch to work with airplanes. In 2001, he went back to Tennessee Tech and this time, successfully obtained an Airframe and Powerplant license. After three years of repairing and doing maintenance on airplanes, Jones realized the money wasn’t what he was hoping. “I didn’t want to travel the world chasing low paying airplane jobs, so I took the advice of a friend who suggested I test for a manufacturing job at Hershey. I got the job.” Shortly after joining Hershey, Jones realized there wasn’t anything he didn’t like about manufacturing. “My job was especially challenging at first because most of the equipment didn’t have manuals, so we had to figure out what was wrong and fix it. I got really good at it,” he said. Seven years of promotions and pay increases put Jones at a crossroads, and as fate would have it, his only chance of advancement was to go back to Southwest for a certification or an associate degree. “When I finally came back on the Macon campus in 2016, one of the first people I saw was a former
