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Two life-changing phone calls present careful parallels for Howard Jones.
The heartbroken father said goodbye to his adopted son this week after the army veteran was killed while fighting for Ukraine.
When Defense Department officials broke the devastating news to him over the phone two weeks ago, Howard couldn’t help but recall the call he received from social services early in life. of his late son.
“You could almost say it’s the only phone call on the other end of his life. I got a phone call telling me he was killed in action,’ Howard told DailyMail.com.
Jeff Jones, 48 from Maine, was killed July 31 when he was hit by an explosive mortar shell in Bakhmut, a mostly Russian-occupied part of eastern Ukraine.
Jeff Jones, 48, died in Ukraine on July 31 after being hit by an explosive mortar round
Howard says he was proud of his son and supportive of his ambitions (the two are pictured together)
Jeff Jones was adopted by Howard and his wife Earline
Howard adopted his son when he was just eight years old after Jeff’s mother was deemed unfit to care for him.
“Jeff came into the world violently and he obviously came out violently. It’s kind of ironic,” he said.
He was born in Maine and grew up in the slums of Lewiston with his mother who lived with significant mental health issues.
His biological father, Howard’s brother-in-law, left when he was just six months old.
Jeff played with a lot of “tougher kids”, but quickly learned to defend himself mentally and physically.
When he was five, his mother was committed to a mental health facility and Jeff was sent to live with relatives while she recovered for over a year.
She was eventually released and they once again lived together, roaming the streets of Cambridge and Boston.
When the two men were arrested by the police, they refused to reveal any information about their identity.
“He stuck to it, he didn’t say anything about who he knew or where he was from,” Howard said.
It was decided that Jeff was not safe in his care and he was placed in foster care for approximately six months.
At some point, authorities were able to link him to Howard and Earline.
“I got a phone call from social services saying ‘we found Jeff’. We didn’t know where he was. They just disappeared. Didn’t contact any family members,” Howard explained.
As a young boy, Jeff dreamed of joining the army
He completed his basic training at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia (pictured with Earline and Howard)
Jeff was trained as a parashooter after joining the Army Airborne Division
He loved to travel and started thinking about helping Ukraine while in Poland.
“We went downstairs, picked him up, did all the paperwork to take them in as a foster child and in about two years we adopted him.”
Jeff graduated from high school and held a job for two years before joining the military, completing his basic training at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia.
He trained in parachuting after joining the Army Airborne Division, jumping from planes until knee problems disqualified him in his early 20s, Howard says.
“His lifelong goal of joining an army and having a career was shattered,” Howard said.
Jeff eventually got married and the couple had a son, but they separated when the boy was a child.
Her adoptive mother Earline died in 2007 of breast cancer after a very brave and determined fight.
Jeff spent time working in Boston for several years, before moving closer to his father in Columbia, South Carolina, and then California.
In 2019, Jeff moved back to Maine and lived in Westbrook, working at a facility that made Covid test kits.
After a year and a half, he started traveling for six weeks, visiting friends in Poland before the war in Ukraine.
He returned to Maine, took another job, before moving to Perry, Georgia at the start of the Russian invasion.
“For three months he only talked about going and volunteering, fighting against the Russians. He was very determined to go there,” says Howard.
“I helped him but I wouldn’t fund him directly. I told him: “I don’t want to be haunted by your mother”.
He joined the American Ukrainian Aid Foundation in Poland
Eventually he was able to register as a foreign fighter
“My goal was to convince him to do humanitarian work.”
He traveled to Europe in March 2022, reunited with a friend in Krakow, Poland, and accepted a volunteer position at train stations where refugees were arriving.
“Jeff helped direct everyone, all the families, where they needed to go next to go through immigration and continue on their way wherever they went in the world.
“Unfortunately, it wasn’t very difficult. So he decided that he was going to go to Lviv in Ukraine where he met a group of people, mainly doctors, who had a team and were creating a new team at the medical team to, not join the Ukrainian army, but to be volunteers accepted by the Ukrainian army, to go to the front and help treat injured Ukrainian soldiers and recover bodies.
Jeff was trained to assist in field triage and his primary duty was to protect medics and injured soldiers.
Meanwhile, Ukraine was training new recruits but with limited resources.
Howard claims medical teams would train the new recruits and befriend a group of people killed by a Russian missile.
“Jeff’s group had to go in and retrieve the bodies. I don’t know how many injury cases they handled, but they had to help support that,” he says.
One day, while out on patrol, Jeff’s party was shelled by artillery and they were forced to take cover behind a building which was hit by a shell.
A cement wall crumbled and landed on Jeff, putting him in a local hospital for five days.
“He was saved by his helmet,” Howard said.
When he was released from the hospital, he decided he wanted to return home, and Howard helped him with funds to return to Georgia.
Jeff’s body was recovered from the combat zone
But when he got home, almost immediately, Jeff started talking about another trip to Ukraine.
“The same thing started again,” he said.
“I tried to convince him to take EMT training in Georgia and serve as an EMT, which I thought was satisfying, but he didn’t show enough interest to go.
“What he did was he went to Poland and he joined the Ukrainian American Foundation. They sourced from all over the world.
“He worked with them for about four weeks. We had a lot of correspondence during this period.
“When they were making a delivery, he got a little closer to the front through Kiev, I believe, where he established a relationship with the Ministry of Defense and joined the Ukrainian army, as a fighter stranger.
“He did a lot of training with foreign fighters, some of whom had no military experience.”
Jeff stayed in touch with Howard but was used to him being quiet for about a week at a time.
On July 31, Jeff had returned from a shooting and texted Howard saying he had volunteered to go on a mission that all other groups of people were afraid to undertake.
“He said he would let us know when he was coming back,” Howard.
“I sent him a message, I never got a response. Less than four hours later I received a call from someone he had befriended saying he had been killed in action.
Ukraine’s Defense Ministry held a ceremony acknowledging Jeff’s death this week
Her photo sat in the middle of a table with her name, date of birth and date of death printed on a wooden box
His ashes are expected to return to Bangor International Airport in September
Although shocked and overcome with sadness, Howard says the news came as no shock after bracing for the worst.
“Within five or six hours of learning he was alive, I received unconfirmed reports from the Embassy that he had been killed.”
Four days later, he received the call from the US Embassy to say that Jeff’s death had been confirmed by the Ministry of Defense in Ukraine.
“When I heard it was done, I wasn’t necessarily surprised. He volunteered, he was a risk taker. He was protective of the group of people he was with.
Jeff’s body was recovered from the combat zone and his ashes are expected to be returned to Bangor International Airport in September.
This week, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense held a ceremony to recognize Jeff and his service. Her photo sat in the middle of a table with her name, date of birth and date of death printed on a wooden box.
Howard is proud of his son and hopes people will understand why trying to make a difference was so important to his son.
“He told a lot of people and he realized how risky it was, and he was willing to sacrifice himself.
“He wanted to give meaning to his life.”