Generous community helps family bring father home

WASILLA — All it took to raise enough money to bring Charles Jones back from the Philippines was one night of generosity from his neighbors.

Jones died while vacationing in that island nation early this year. When his children heard how much it would cost to get him home they were dumbfounded — $7,500 isn’t the kind of money they keep lying around.

So they set to work organizing a fund-raiser. Jones’ daughter, April Dwyer, and son, Cory Jones, set to work with the VFW and American Legion. Pretty soon there was a spaghetti feed scheduled for the VFW post on Knik-Goose Bay Road. Their father was an avid bowler and at around the same time Dwyer was putting her plans in place that community decided to step up as well. The event North Bowl manager Don Marquart organized fell on the same day as the spaghetti feed.

“He pretty much put all that on and organized it for us,” Dwyer said of Marquart. She said he did an excellent job. She said he would have had more help but, “He only had Cory there because the whole family was at the spaghetti feed cooking.”

Dwyer said the local business community stepped up as well. The spaghetti feed featured a silent auction with framed prints, a snowboard, gift certificates and a whole lot of other stuff — 75 items in total.

It was one night with two fund-raisers and by the time the dust settled there was enough money in hand to bring Jones home.

“We were very pleasantly surprised and very, very thankful,” Dwyer said by phone Thursday, having just left Fort Richardson where she and her brother were making arrangements for a military funeral for their father.

She said they were able to wire the money to the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines on March 9. It’s still unclear when their father will arrive

“We’re going to go ahead and plan services for Saturday the 26th,” she said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.