It’s with heavy hearts that the family of Eugene D. Jones, also known as Doug, announce his passing. Jones was born on Jan. 5, 1925, and he passed away on Aug. 21, 2025.
Doug lived to be 100 years old in Wilton, where he and his late wife, Betty, were groundbreaking leaders in the community.
Doug Jones celebrates his 100th birthday Credit: Jack McFadden 
Stay at Home in Wilton founding members: (standing L-R) Ann Newton, Kay Chann, Dick King, Phil Richards, Anne Richards, and Karen Pingarron. (Sitting L-R) Doug Jones, Barbara Sage and Bob Pingarron. (not pictured — Gierdra Troncone) 
Doug Jones celebrates his 100th birthday with his family Credit: Jack McFadden 
Doug and Betty at the 2015 Wilton Library Sidewalk Sale Credit: Wilton Library 
Doug Jones was the speaker at Stay at Home in Wilton’s 10th anniversary Credit: Stay at Home in Wilton
A civil engineer by trade, Jones was a graduate of New York University’s College of Engineering, and he specialized in urban planning and transportation engineering. Doug directed some of the largest and most visible engineering projects of the past century, including the first-ever container terminal in Boston Harbor, the Garden State Parkway, Denver International Airport, the South Jersey Rapid Transit System, and people movers now used in airports worldwide.
Doug was a WWII veteran, serving as a transportation corps officer in the US Army. He was a civil rights activist, an opera fan and an avid boating enthusiast. He served on multiple boards of directors and trustees including Northeast Utilities, Sarah Lawrence College, Goodspeed Opera House and the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk, and also established the Eugene and Betty Jones Minority Engineering Students Scholarship.
As a devoted husband for over 65 years, Doug passionately managed and supported his wife Betty’s career as an international opera singer. The two were among the founding members of Stay at Home in Wilton in 2010, and Doug was also a long-time member of the Wilton Kiwanis Club and part of the glue that held the community together. A real “people person,” he was always interested in who knew who, who did what, and he was always willing to help give a leg up.
In 2020, Jones spoke to GOOD Morning Wilton reporter Lily Kepner for a series of articles on race in Wilton. He recounted how he and Betty were one of the first Black families to move to Wilton in the mid-1950s, which at the time was a very white town.
In 1954, Doug, then a 29-year-old engineer, found an ad in the New York paper for a ranch-style country home in Wilton. Upon seeing the house in-person, Jones made a deposit with the $25 he had with him on the spot with Betty at his side.
Like many Wiltonians, the newlyweds moved here seeking a place to raise a family and escape the city. Unbeknownst to the Joneses, the house was owned by a Jewish man who had encountered some prejudice as a minority in Wilton and was motivated to sell to a Black family — Betty recalled in her book, The Music in My Life, that the man was very willing to sell it to them, telling them, “‘Maybe Wilton will learn something by doing so.‘”
The Joneses had activism in their blood. Doug’s father was one of the original founders of the Urban League and Betty’s uncle, Walter White, was once the executive director of the NAACP, both prominent civil rights organizations.
“I was on my first picket line when I was about four or five years old,” Doug told GMW. “We had just moved to Jersey, and they hadn’t hooked up the stove… and so we went to this restaurant, and they wouldn’t serve us, and we kept on waiting and waiting and my father finally went over and they said, ‘We don’t serve colored here.’”
Doug spoke of watching the Wilton community “grow” and change over the years he spent here with Betty, as they raised their family. He loved Wilton, even despite it not always being a haven from discrimination. Betty wrote in her book about one early event, when a Wilton barber refused to cut her son’s hair when they entered his barbershop, not because he didn’t know how, but because he was afraid of losing business if people knew he served them. According to Betty, Wilton had their back. After she recounted the snub to a minister at the Wilton Congregational Church, where she and Doug both sang in the choir, the minister reported it to the Connecticut Civil Rights Commission.
Doug and Betty’s son, Jeff Jones, shared a photo of the couple giving a talk on their trip to Africa.
“My dad took a U.S. government job in Liberia building roads through the Congo, after they bought the house in Wilton. I went with them as a young child,” Jeff said.
“My sister, Janet, was born in Africa in 1956, so my guess is the picture was taken in the late 1950s (’57-’58-ish),” Jeff told GMW.
While the Joneses lived there, they were visited by then Sen. Richard Nixon and his wife, Pat Nixon.
“Dick came to inspect the job and my mom made Pat blueberry pancakes,” Jeff recalled.
Doug was a loving father to Janet and Jeff; a doting uncle to Daryl, Debbie and Dwight; an adoring grandfather to Wesley, Samantha, Brandis and Hunter; a great-grandfather to Scarlett; and a grateful patient to his caregivers Trish and Karma.
He truly had a life well lived.
A Memorial Service will be held at 11 a.m. on Oct. 25 at the Wilton Congregational Church.
