Bruce Jones, Engineer-Manager with the St. Joseph County Road Commission, as he presented the agency's annual report to the St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners on July 21, 2009.

Bruce Jones, engineer/manager with the St. Joseph County Road Commission, has announced plans to retire on June 30, 2010.

At that point, he will be one-month shy of 52 years with the Road Commission, including service as engineer/manager since 1966.

Jones, now 76 years old, reported his retirement decision to the Board of Road Commissioners during their meeting last Friday (December 11th).

Jones said the years with the Road Commission have been good years.  In his words, “It’s my home county and I’ve enjoyed it, met a lot of nice people, worked for a lot of nice people, and worked with a lot of nice people, so it made it a lot easier to stick around for the years that I did.”  Bruce_Jones_audio clip – :13

One thing he won’t miss is getting up at 3 or 4 in the morning when winter storms move into the county to “take a look at what’s going on out there,” a task “that makes for a real long day.”  He said, “Even though I’m in excellent health, that still does drain you physically and I’m not looking forward to this winter, particularly if it’s like the last two winters were.  They were quite stressful and, of course the decreased revenue didn’t help any so it’s been particularly stressful.”

Jones is frustrated by the decrease in funding for the Road Commission.  He said, “We just have not been able to do things that we wanted to do, both in the winter time and, of course, the bad winters took away a lot of funds so we couldn’t do everything we wanted to do in the summer time, particularly maintain the existing blacktops like we’d like to and chip-and-seal and patching.”

Jones has worn multiple hats for many years – engineer/manager, superintendent of operations, and foreman of the Road Commission garage in Centreville.  Knowing he would eventually retire, he suggested that the board get someone in place to head up operations and “get that job divided up a little bit responsibility-wise and time-wise.”  As a result, Rick Jackson has been on board since August as superintendent of operations, “learning the process, what all goes into superintendent of operations and so on.”  Jones said that, “What happens regarding an engineer – that is still to be decided.”

When asked what he plans to do after June 30th, Jones said, “I’ve got a lot of books the kids have given me over the years that I have just never opened because the job has been kind of a full day’s job.  I get home at night and I’m kind of an avid newspaper reader and I’m ready to hit the sack.  I really haven’t been able to sustain any book reading down through the years so I’ve got a lot of those to catch up on.”  And, he added, “Of course, I enjoy playing golf and softball so I’ll find something to do, particularly in the warm weather months.”  Bruce_Jones_audio clip – :34

To hear an interview with Bruce Jones, conducted by Bruce Snook of the River Country Journal, click here (6:33 – 6 MB).