JJ's Story: From Homelessness to Helping Build and Design Home Furniture

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Connecting changes everything. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. To search for the Our American Stories Podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, we're bringing you a local story from right here in Oxford, Mississippi, where we broadcast each and every day. Here's JJ Jones telling his personal story of the many ups and downs that ultimately led him to his calling.

And that would be woodworking. My name is Allen J. Jones. Everybody calls me JJ. I was born and raised here in Oxford, Mississippi. I'm a graduate of Oxford High School. Graduated in 1993 and went on to pursue my career in athletics at Northwest, where I played football and baseball. Had a time of my life there, enjoyed it, excelled in sports, left there, went to Kentucky State, played football and baseball there. Had a time of my life playing sports. But my sports career came to an end with a shoulder injury that I had while working out for a pro baseball team. So I had to kind of regroup my life, reset myself. I went on and finished school.

I got me a degree, bachelor's of arts in criminal justice. And when I left Kentucky State, I moved back to Memphis because my dad was in Memphis. So I figured it was a cool place to go.

I was like, why not? Not far from home, I just moved back to Memphis. And that's where I stayed for 13 years, right there in Memphis, living life, trying to figure life out. Didn't really know what I wanted to do. Was working in my criminal justice field and was bored out of my mind. Started thinking this is not what I wanted to do.

And it wasn't just the income, it was the overall scope of everything. Figured out real quick, I had no desire in my heart to be a policeman. I had no desire to be a state trooper.

I had no desire to work in a prison system. I wanted to work with at-risk youth. However, I wasn't doing that. I was helping retail stores control their theft, so to speak.

So I was doing laws of prevention and I was traveling around training for the Big Lots Corporation, for Marshalls, TJ Maxx, for these companies. And I was still bored out of my mind. So after years and years of that, I started dabbling in tile work. Bought a house out in Cordova in Memphis and started dabbling in tile work. I wanted to lay tile so bad for some reason. I don't know why, but I was amused by it. So I started watching the new construction houses and when they would finish working in the evening, I would go watch and try to figure out how did they do this?

Like, how did they do that? So I met the contractor one day and he actually kind of caught me over there like just looking. I told him I just was intrigued by people at tile and wanted to watch.

He said, fine, as long as I stayed out of the way, there was no problem. Needless to say, I watched enough and I went and did my own chores. I thought it was cool.

Later I realized it wasn't, but at the time I thought it was cool. And after that, I said, well, I'm going to build a deck in my backyard. Well, I didn't have any money, was barely making it by the skin of my teeth. So I would go in Lowe's. Now, I don't know about now, but Lowe's used to have a section of books, how to build things about lumber and all this type of stuff. So I would go in Lowe's and just stand there reading their books.

You know, the phones then didn't have all the technology like now. So I would just sit there, read books, maybe take a piece of paper and write it down. And this manager one day would mess with me and say, you're not reading again. So one day he gave me one of the books, you know, and it was a book on spans and loads of different size lumber and all this type of stuff. So I went home and saved me up some money and I started building my deck. When I built it, the builder saw it and he came over, gave me supporters. But then when I finished it, he told me it was good. I built my fence.

When I built my fence, he asked me about working with it. And I thought it was a cool idea. So I said, yeah, that's fun to me. So I started doing that. And somewhere along the way, I met another contractor and she offered me a job doing remodels with her and building fences and decks and tile working. And I was like, man, this is what I want to do, you know. So in my mind, I thought it was, but I was like, this is what I want to do right here.

I get to do everything that I've learned how to do. So we got so busy that I eventually walked away from the criminal justice situation because it was, it was dead end for me. There was no room for growth and I just didn't enjoy it.

I dreaded going every freaking day and I just didn't enjoy it. So when I walked away, the construction industry was like really booming at this point in time. So I was having a time in my life, getting up, going to work, still wasn't making a lot of money, but I was happy, you know. And I was in Hernando, Mississippi at Miss Lori Welch House. We're good friends to this day. We're very good friends.

She's very close to me. I was doing her floors and she literally walked over to me. She didn't know me that well at all, but she literally walked over to me and she said, JJ, you're going to build this entertainment center for me over here, my living room.

And I was looking like, I'm not doing none of that. And she said, yes, you are. And I just looked at her. I said, well, Miss Lori, I can't do that. She said, yes, you can. And I was like, no, ma'am. So I finished her floors, hurry up and left the house. Next day I came back to do some other little fine tuning for her. She said the same thing. You're going to build me this big entertainment center. And she had the whole design laid out here. And I'm just looking at her like, she got to be out of her mind. I'm not doing this.

And needless to say, about three weeks later, she called me one day and I still say it was a trick to this day, but she called me and she said, hey, what are you doing this weekend? And I said, nothing much. And she said, great. I ordered the material. I got it all at my house in the garage.

I need you to come build this entertainment center. And I was like, oh my God. So I went and did it. And it was, it came pretty easy after I saw it.

I went in there, built it, built it in one day. And she was like, see, that wasn't bad. And I was like, well, no, it really was good. And so then she said, okay, next I need you to build my daughter a headboard. And I was like, nope, not doing it.

You know, we went through this thing all the way all the way over again. So I did that. And then I started doing like little small jobs for people. Somebody wanted a headboard, someone wanted a little footstool, little things like that. You know, that's kind of, that was my building for entertainment center was my first introduction into woodworking. And I still to this day say I didn't know what I was doing. It came out beautiful to this day. It's beautiful, but I still, I didn't know what I was doing.

Not to me. I didn't know what I was doing. So that was my introduction into woodworking. And after that, I kind of put it along with things. But once I moved back to Oxford was really when my career, it took some great ups.

It took some, some even bigger downs in order for me to find why hell no. And you've been listening to J.J. Jones share his story with us. He's sort of a local legend and craftsman here in town now. But my goodness, the ups and downs he had to take to get there, like so many of us.

Well, you're about to hear more. And he does some of the most beautiful work has designed some of the beautiful furniture that's in our studio and some of it in my home and so many homes in this area. And little did he know his career was launched because of that one person's love of him and those encouraging words. When we come back more of J.J. story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country, stories from our big cities and small towns.

But we truly can't do the show without you. Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot.

Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. There's a lot happening these days, but I have just the thing to get you up to speed on what matters without taking too much of your time. The Seven from the Washington Post is a podcast that gives you the seven most important and interesting stories.

And we always try to save room for something fun. You get it all in about seven minutes or less. I'm Hannah Jewell. I'll get you caught up with The Seven every weekday.

So follow The Seven right now. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. Well, I don't know about you, but like I never liked being told, oh, wow, you look so good for your age.

Like, why even bother saying that? Why don't you just say you look great at any age, every age? That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about. We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now. Meaningful Beauty. Beautiful skin at every age. Learn more at MeaningfulBeauty.com. And we're back with Our American Stories and with J.J. Jones telling us the story about his passion for woodworking came to be and how even someone with a very stable upbringing can hit the lowest of lows.

Let's pick up where we last left off. I had two parents. I had a mom and a father. Both, they were married. I have a wonderful, awesome mother, a wonderful, awesome father. Both of them are still living. Both of them are still wonderful and both of them are still awesome. I had a great parents.

They were, they were disciplinarians, but they were disciplinarians in a way of respect people, treat people right. You know, it was, I got to say, I had a good childhood. I actually, when I was a kid, I thought we were rich. You know, I was like, man, we, I didn't know we were poor. We were broke.

We didn't have, we didn't, we didn't have the extras, but we had everything we needed. You know, my dad worked hard. My mom worked hard. My dad worked my dad worked two, three jobs just to make sure we had the basic necessities.

I didn't know. I thought he was working because he enjoyed working. You know, he enjoyed what he was doing, but he was working to make sure that we were all taken care of. So I had, I had a great childhood. When it comes to life, I learned, I was taught a lot of things about life, treating people right, busting your butt. Nobody's going to hand you anything, you know, and if you want it, earn it.

And if you earn it, it's yours. You know, a lot of moral values about life, God, the whole nine were put into me as a kid. And I didn't, I honestly didn't get it at the time, but as time went on and I got older, I'm like, Oh wow. That's what they taught me. Cause you know, I was just like any other kid. I don't want to hear that. You know, it was just, you know, your parents, you know, then they're not cool. They don't know, you know, that's, you know, that was me, you know?

And so it's like, I look back now and I'm like, wow. You know, when I first started doing woodworking, my dad, he will, he could attest to this. My dad came to me and he said, you know, I don't think you should do this. He said, I think you should go into coaching.

I think you should do something with the kids. I think you should do something with sports. He said, I just don't, I just don't think you should do this woodworking thing. I just don't see, I don't see the future for you.

Well, once I thought about it, I couldn't see the future for me either because I had never picked up a hammer. You know, my whole childhood, my entire childhood, I never did anything with wood my entire childhood. You know, other than visually, I used to watch my grand, my grandfather, my mom's father. Um, he started our family business, the funeral, a funeral. So I used to watch him make wooden boxes for, for coffins to go in.

And when I was a little, I was intrigued by watching him run a song and I never did it, but I just used to stand there and watch him like, Ooh, you know, I was intrigued by it. So again, I had, I had great parents, you know, I had a, I had some really good parents, you know, they didn't, they didn't play a lot of myths, gave us a lot of leeway, a lot of opportunities to grow. They gave us opportunities to get in trouble, you know, but it was all life lessons. It was all life lessons. So I'm, I'm grateful for my childhood. I really am.

I have a hundred percent no regrets on how I was raised. My dad, I guess it might've been four, three, four years later, he came in town and he said, I need to talk to you for a minute. And I was like, okay. And he came to me, he said, you know, I just want to tell you I was wrong. I'm proud of you. He said, I've been watching and just watching what you're doing.

He said, I'm proud of, he said, you gotta, you're doing exactly what God told you to do. And I had to be honest with him. I said, honestly, when I started it, I didn't know where I was going. I just knew I wanted to go this direction. And I knew what I was doing. I was, I was fulfilled, you know, it's hard for a parent. I got, I knew exactly what he was saying. Cause it was hard for him to say, man, I don't want to watch him go down this road. This is, it's a dead end.

There's nothing there. Why does he want to do that? You know, and it was, and it was hard for him, but once he saw and even like to this day, he's just like, man, I'm, Hey, I'm proud of you. I'm, you know, I'm doing something that my dad basically managed people. He's awesome working with people, special Olympics, kids, adults, senior citizens. He is awesome at organizing and working hand to hand with people. He loves it, you know, putting things together like that. Well, that wasn't the direction I wanted to go in, but I really didn't know. It wasn't that I didn't know how to tell him that it was more so like, I didn't know, I didn't really know what I wanted to go in, but I knew I wanted to try something with this woodwork, you know? So, yeah.

The biggest challenge of my life was once I started doing the construction thing, and I actually started to make a little bit of money, but I was the guy that still had people around him who were not up to good things. I'm with them, so I'm not up to good things. We would hang out every day. We would go to party every day. We would throw parties. You know, we would just do what, just have it every day.

We're going to just have fun every day, every weekend. Well, when I got custody of my daughter, I couldn't work like I used to. So, my 12-hour days of working went down to six, seven-hour days.

So, I couldn't sustain my lifestyle. So, first I was like, well, I got this extra truck. I'm going to sell it where I can make some money to keep my house. But I sold that one. Then I was like, I'm going to have to sell this car too.

But I sold that one trying to keep the roof over my head. And finally, I got that knock on the door saying, you got to get out the house. So, I ended up homeless, me and my daughter. We ended up sleeping in a truck on a Walmart parking lot. And I'm not talking about for a couple of nights.

I'm talking about for months, months, months, months. And when we finally were able to get a little money, we would sleep in a, we would get a hotel room a night or two. My mom found out.

So, she would help get a hotel room here and there. But by this time, we've been sleeping in a truck and the truck was in such bad shape that I couldn't sit in the car rider line with it running because it wasn't working. It was running because it would overheat. You know, it was starting running hot and all this.

So, it was embarrassing. So, I would park like a little away from the car rider line, walk and go get my daughter. And we didn't live too far from the school. So, some days, we didn't have gas. So, some days, I'd just be like, hey, we got to park over there. And we got to walk today raining, pouring out rain.

We'd be under a little umbrella. But I didn't have gas. And I didn't have a vehicle that was dependable. It had no heat. It had no air. So, I had to find my daughter a little blanket in the Goodwill that you plugged into the little cigarette lighter to her little seat because it didn't have any heat in it, right?

So, the only heat we would get was driving it, the heat coming from the engine. That was it, you know. But we went through that phase. And that's when I really, that's when I really, my life changed.

That was like the biggest challenge of my life. And it was bigger than work and woodworking because I thought, I was, honestly, at one point, I was like just mad at God because I was like, you know, how you let this happen? You know, like seriously, I was just like, this, this is a joke. I thought the right thing to do was get custody of my daughter.

But ever since I got custody of her, everything's already going down. So, I'm like, what kind of crap is this? You know, and it's just, you know, me being honest, I was like, what is this? Talk to me. And I'm like, you talk to everybody else. Well, I don't hear it.

I don't hear what they hear. The little money I got, I got to pay aftercare, you know, and everybody was, well, put in a cheaper place. Well, I don't have gas to drive on the other side of town, you know. So, then when my daughter was in this daycare, I met the owner. So, what he would let me do was paint the classrooms on the weekends and do little maintenance work to keep her tuition paid.

So, that was something we worked out. Like, I would do whatever work they needed because I couldn't, it got to the point I couldn't afford to keep her there because I didn't, we didn't have money. So, we ended, when we were homeless, it was tough because it put me in a position where I couldn't tell my son because he stayed with his mom because I knew if she found out, she probably wasn't gonna let him just run around town with me as a parent should, you know, I get it.

But I still wanted to see my son. On the other hand, I had this little girl who was, who was at the time was like kindergarten, first grade and just, she don't understand. She just wanted to be with her dad and we're having fun.

That's it. No matter where we are, if dad's good, she's good. All those nights she would go to sleep, I would just cry. I was broken. Like, I was really broken. And finally, one night I got sick. I got sick and my daughter just found out probably like a year or two ago when I, when I got sick, I was really sick. She thought I was kidding because she had a little clay nurse and stuff, nursing stethoscope and all that.

But I got sick one night and I was sitting on the end of the bed and it came clear as day to me. God just said, do I have your attention? Do I have your attention now? That's all I could hear was do I have your attention now? Because prior to that, the world didn't matter. I was just doing whatever I could to get by.

It didn't matter. You know, so once we got out of that situation, I told myself then, I said, you know what? This is a situation I'd never want to visit again. And you've been listening to J.J. Jones tell one heck of a story and talk about the low of lows to seek custody of your daughter. And J.J. didn't get, J.J. did not get into the particulars for good reason. And we don't need to know them because we know it wasn't good.

Not good at all. He stepped up. He did what he thought was the right thing to do. And then things just turned south. And there he is with his daughter, just broken. And she slept alongside her daddy in a car. And it doesn't get lower than that, folks. Any man who's been there?

Any parent who's been there? Well, you're crying a little bit. When we come back, we're going to learn about how J.J. pulls himself out of this and how God helps him. The story of J.J. Jones, local woodsman, local craftsman, local master craftsman, J.J. Jones and just one heck of a guy.

His story continues here on Our American Stories. There's a lot happening these days, but I have just the thing to get you up to speed on what matters without taking too much of your time. The Seven from The Washington Post is a podcast that gives you the seven most important and interesting stories.

And we always try to save room for something fun. You get it all in about seven minutes or less. I'm Hannah Jewell. I'll get you caught up with The Seven every weekday. So follow The Seven right now. With dozens of streaming services, box office films and content to choose from, people are spending over two and a half years of their lives searching for what to watch. But The Hollywood Reporter brings you T.H.R. Charts, one place for you, your family and friends to find the most watched TV shows and movies every week. T.H.R. Charts is a guide to help you spend less time scrolling through platforms so that you can spend more time watching and binging the content everyone is talking about, all supported by data and trusted sources like Nielsen, Comscore and Paired Analytics.

Check out T.H.R. Charts on HollywoodReporter.com. Hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. Well, I don't know about you, but like I never liked being told, oh, wow, you look so good for your age.

Like, why even bother saying that? Why don't you just say you look great at any age, every age. That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about. We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now. Meaningful Beauty. Beautiful skin at every age.

Learn more at MeaningfulBeauty.com. And we're back with our American stories and with J.J. Jones sharing his story. We left off with him at the lowest point in his life.

Let's pick up where we last left off. It was the bottom of the bottom for me. I had good parents. My dad didn't know. I didn't tell him. My mom didn't know. I didn't tell the people closest to me. I didn't tell them. I was embarrassed.

I was hurt because the guys I thought were my friends. Now I needed them and they turned their backs and walked away, you know. So that was one of the hardest parts of my life. However, it was a necessary part of my life. I needed to get away from the people that were around me. I needed to understand that there was nothing bigger in life than God. I had to these things I had to understand because I didn't give him credit for nothing. I was just like, I did it.

That was my thoughts. I did it. What do you mean? I went to work. I made the money.

I did it. So I wasn't grateful about what I had going on. That was one of the biggest challenges of my life.

That phase right there. When I was a kid, I had a thing. I would never idolize an athlete, right? Because I idolized my dad. My dad made it happen. I mentioned earlier I had a good father.

My dad was like super mad at me. No matter what we needed, he made it happen. No matter where it was, where we had to travel, play a sport, he was always there. My dad was that guy.

My favorite athlete was Bo Jackson. My mentor, my guide through life was my dad. Then it was my granddad or my mom's father. Those were the two men in my life as a kid all the way up through college that were just rocks.

I mean, they were just rocks. Now, before I was homeless, my dad had gotten into a situation where he was taken away. My dad was in jail for like a year and a half. So through my whole world, my superhero is in jail, literally in jail.

What in the world is going on? So through my early part of my life, through my sports career, probably up just before I started doing the woodworking, my dad was that person for me. To this day, my dad's a great mentor, but my dad was that person. Once I moved back home and once I moved back to Oxford, the crazy thing about it was I was working with a guy, my childhood friend. I thought me and this guy were just like the best of friends. I thought we were brothers. We literally grew up houses apart and would sleep at each other's house every other night, but I didn't know that his mind wasn't in the right place.

I had no idea. He had other things going on, but through that guy, I met one amazing soul. Now, the amazing part about that is I didn't know him.

I didn't even live here at that moment. I was commuting back and forth to Memphis, to Memphis from here, and I saw him, met him, waved at him, kept on moving. I was building his studio furniture. That's what I was doing, build a studio furniture, doing beads, and I spoke with him. I had no idea that years later, once I needed business advice, once I needed to know how to manage money, once I needed to know how to actually run a business, he was the guy that set me down and said, hey, this is what you can do. You can do it. Quit studying yourself short.

You do premium work. He was a guy that kind of put my head in the right position. Again, a father, you know, he was another father thing, but those have been, those two men have been the biggest key parts of my life. From childhood up and I got out of college and then after I was homeless and I came here, he was one of the first people I connected with and didn't even know it.

I mean, we just was, hey, how you doing? But a few years later, God led us back to each other and he really helped put my life in a better position. There's one other guy that was a mentor through sports. He was a sports guy. He was my high school basketball coach.

The guy who owned Snow Biz in Oxford. He was the hardest, I mean, would push you to your limit person I ever met, but he was a guy that only wanted the best for you. And at the time I thought it was just basketball, but once I left school, I realized it was about life.

Give your best, be your best. You know, he was a guy that, when we were in high school, we went through this little racial thing for some reason, like all the black players were quitting. They said, he's picking on the black players and he's not picking on the white players.

It was a bunch of nothing, but I was the only black player left on the team. And I remember my dad asking me one day, he just said, I got, I got a question. He said, why are you still on the team? And I said, because he's never done anything to me that was wrong. And he said, you keep that same mind state. He said, you do not follow crowds. You do what's right.

And I said, it was the right thing. Well, needless to say that all the other guys started wanting to come back on the team and he wouldn't let them because at this point we're losing all the story players are gone. Everybody's gone. We're just getting our brains beat out night after night, after night, but he had to keep, he had to keep his thing. I can't let them come back.

I can't let them just walk back on my team. So, you know, coach Sherman, um, I got a lot of love. I got a lot of love in my heart for coach Sherman. He was the, he was that athletic mentor. You know, every sport you played in a game, he was going to be there.

I don't care what sport it was. He was coming. I would just say, regardless of who you are and regardless of what you're trying to do in life, things are going to happen. Some intentional, some not intentional, but things are going to happen, but don't fall victim.

I did this at one point. Don't fall victim to thinking that when something hurts you or something sets you back, that you got to always fix it. Some things are going to always hurt. When I was homeless, I said, I'll never be homeless again. I never asked God to make me forget about it because I know how it feels to be hungry. I know how it feels to go, go through the drive-through of Wendy's and be able to buy two 99 cent chicken nuggets and hope your daughter don't eat all of them.

So you can eat something. I know how it feels. I don't want them to take those thoughts away from me. I use them as motivation. So don't, don't often we get caught in this thing of thinking I got to do things a certain way. I saw my dad and my mom operate a certain way. And I was like, okay, I'm going to have to operate a certain way where the truth of the matter is I got to make my own mistakes. I got to do my life.

I got to go out here and see what it's about. I got to go do some good things and I'm going to do some things that might not be right. And I'm not talking about going to rob or kill nobody, but some of the decisions I made in my life, I don't regret them. I just, I just, they serve as, they had a purpose. Some of the business decisions I made, I don't regret them.

They had a purpose. They got me to where I am now. So if a guy like me can think he's doing everything, ball hit rock bottom, keep scratching, keep clawing, working hard and can bust his butt to come back and reestablish yourself in life and give to other people and pull other people up along the way, anybody can.

But it start, it start with self. My dad can tell me anything. He can tell me everything until he's blue in the face. But I also got to have a will and a desire to say, hey, let me go do it. My grandfather told me a long time ago, I don't care if you pick up cans, be the best, better collector in the world.

And it sticks with me. It's, I never would have thought a million years I would build stuff out of wood and make a living do it. You, if you had told me that when I started, I'd have been like, yeah, right.

And now I look, I went from where I was working and now I've, I probably either delivered and shipped furniture to at least 13 to 15 states. I never thought I would do that in my life. So anything possible, but you got to talk, you got to, you got to channel out all the head noise.

That's what it worked for me. You know, I just, sometime I have to channel out the head noise, man. I have to get to myself. I'm out here in my shop now because this is my, this is my peaceful place. This is my, this is my haven.

This is where I'm happy. You know? So I come out here, even when I don't have work, sometime I just come out here and sit here for a minute because this is my, clear my mind space. And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by our own Madison Derricott and my daughter, Reagan. And JJ is, well, he's so well known in this town. His story's well known.

He shares it. He doesn't hide the bad parts. When you see him around young men and young women, absolutely inspiring. And he gives them hope.

He gives a lot of kids hope. I had great parents. He said a good childhood. When I was a kid, I thought we were rich.

We didn't have extras, but we had everything we needed. We had a great childhood. And then he talked about those people he was around.

I had people around me that were not up to good things, which meant I was not up to good things. And this turned in the end, his life, very far South, those people he was hanging with in Memphis, Tennessee. The story of JJ Jones. And by the way, what a heck of a father-son story. What a heck of a mentorship story. That woman he met who encouraged him, those mentors in this town who loved on him.

And now he's doing the same. JJ Jones story here on Our American Stories. With dozens of streaming services, box office films and content to choose from, people are spending over two and a half years of their lives searching for what to watch. But The Hollywood Reporter brings you THR charts. One place for you, your family and friends to find the most watched TV shows and movies every week. THR charts is a guide to help you spend less time scrolling through platforms so that you can spend more time watching and binging the content everyone is talking about. All supported by data and trusted sources like Nielsen comScore and paired analytics.

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