Audrey Elizabeth Jones, of Huntsville, Alabama, passed away on October 18, 2016, at the age of 81. She was born in Shanghai, China, on October 9, 1935. She was preceded in death by her husband of 53 years, Raymon Mark Jones, in 2008. Audrey is survived by an elder sister, Charlotte Peters, of Connecticut, and a son, Mark Raymond Jones, of Odenton, Maryland, and his wife Jo Ann and three grandchildren: Rebecca, Haley and Anna.
Audrey was born in China by virtue of her parents having lived for many years in that country. After returning to the United States in early 1936, Audrey’s family eventually settled in Houston, Texas, in 1941. Audrey’s parents lived here for the remainder of their lives. Ironically, their residence in the River Oaks section of the city was less than two miles from where Ray’s family was living until the Joneses moved to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, in early 1943. Despite such close proximity, Audrey and Ray never met until a decade later, in college, where they attended the University of Colorado in Boulder.
Audrey was a prodigious student and was permitted to skip a grade in school which allowed her to graduate high school and enter the university at the age of 16. It was during her first year there that she met Ray Jones, who would become her husband in 1955. Audrey graduated from college in 1956 and joined her husband on multiple hops across the country as he took various assignments as a pilot for the U.S. Air Force. She was proud to be a service wife, but was glad to leave that lifestyle after three years when Ray took a position as a mechanical engineer with Boeing and they settled in Seattle, Washington.
In April 1961, two years after moving to Seattle, Audrey gave birth to a son, Mark. He would be their only child. Audrey came to live in Huntsville in 1964 when Ray was assigned to the expanding Apollo moon landing program and here they would live out their lives together.
Audrey was a music lover and dedicated nearly her entire adult life to the production of music, first as a song writer under the penname Audrey Edmunds, and later as a silent partner in the Alamo Recording Studio in Huntsville. After the Alamo studio closed in the late 1980s, Audrey established her own proprietorship, the Party Time Talent Agency, which she operated for nearly thirty years, closing the business and retiring in 2014.
Visitation will take place Saturday, October 22, 2016, at Laughlin Service Funeral Home from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. A non-denominational service will be held immediately after visitation in the Laughlin chapel. Audrey’s family requests that donations, in lieu of flowers, be made to the Humane Society of Huntsville, out of respect for her life-long love of animals and concern for pets in distress. Visit https://www.ghhs.org/donations/ or call: 256-881-8081 for more information.
