5 minute read
ACCOMPLISHING THE
dream Alumnus Alfred Jones is ready to take flight
With 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.
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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 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
instructor and was amazed he remembered me,” said Jones, who admits he was only attending to get a raise. “Because I already had the basics out of the way, I figured I might as well get my associate degree in mechatronics instead of going for a certification.”
In the beginning, Jones took a class a semester, but as graduation became a closer reality, he wound up taking as many as five courses at once. Three years of consistent work later, he realized, “Wow, I have a degree. It’s something that should have been primary from the beginning, but it took me awhile to see it.”
Through hands-on classes and instruction received at Southwest, Jones found new ways of approaching old problems. “I thought I knew everything about the equipment because I repeated the way things had always been done,” Jones said. “My instructors taught me the correct way, and it truly benefitted my career and the company in many different aspects.”
After working at Hershey for 12 years, Jones accepted a job as maintenance planner for Mitsubishi where he has worked since 2018, ensuring that equipment making fluids for electrical cars like Teslas is reliable. “It’s a new kind of adventure for me,” Jones says. “Our company didn’t have a maintenance crew until two years ago, so I run modified lifecycle tests to see how long each piece of equipment can and should last. It’s all based on experience and spreadsheet documentation. My job is to make sure the equipment stays reliable and up and running.”
As far as recommending a career in maintenance, Jones says without hesitation, “There are lots of job openings for maintenance, and it’s a great field that can help you anywhere. If something breaks at home, you can fix it yourself without having to pay someone else $100 per hour.”
Longevity and earning respect in the field has brought Jones other benefits like several six-figure job offers over the past eight months, which he has turned down. It is no longer about the money, but rather about fulfilling his dream of becoming a commercial pilot. “I will be 50 years old by the time I complete my commercial flight requirements, but this still leaves me fifteen years to fly. Since pilots have a mandatory retirement age of 65, I kept asking if I was too old, and all I heard was ‘go for it,’ and I am.”
Words of advice? Jones believes in never giving up on a dream. “It’s never too late to try something new. If you want to do something, do it. You are the only one who can talk you out of it. If somebody says you can’t, don’t listen to them. The main thing is to try and believe you can achieve it.” S N
