Gardner Dulaney (Sonny) Jones Jr.

Gardner Dulany Jones, Jr.
Raleigh
On Monday, November 2, 2020, Gardner Dulany Jones, Jr. gently slipped away from this life after a valiant ten year struggle with Parkinson's Disease and a few days after being diagnosed with COVID-19. Gardner was born on March 21,1934 to Gardner Dulany Jones, Sr. and Bessie Lee Carpenter in Nassawodox, Virginia on the Eastern Shore. An only child known as "Sonny," he grew up in Cheriton, Virginia and graduated from Northhampton High School in 1951. He spent a year at State Teachers College of Maryland at Salisbury and then earned a BS Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Virginia and a MSc degree from Princeton University. He took a job with Sperry Rand in Charlottesville, Virginia where he worked on nuclear submarines testing depth gauges and joked about "sleeping between the missiles." In 1965 he took a position with IBM corporation at a new lab that the company was building in the Research Triangle Park. Gardner enrolled in a PhD program in electrical engineering at NCSU and received his doctorate in 1970. During his 28 year career with IBM, Gardner applied his extensive knowledge of digital communications technology to do basic work in speech processing, digital data transmission, and various other types of digital signal processing. He was a prolific inventor and received over 34 patent awards, published many technical papers, and received multiple awards, including Inventor of the Year for IBM in 1983. He retired as a Senior Technical Staff Member in 1993. He met his wife Elizabeth ( "Betty") Irene Messersmith while working in Charlottesville and they married on September 13, 1959. They lived in Raleigh in the Glen Forest subdivision for 48 years where they raised their son, Laney, and daughter, Mary Beth, before moving to Springmoor Retirement Community in 2014. Gardner enjoyed gardening and tinkering with anything mechanical. He will be remembered for his dry wit and gentle soul. He is survived by his loving wife, Betty of 61 years; son, Laney Jones of Greensboro; daughter, Dr. Mary Beth Jones and husband Leo Guzynski of Raleigh; grandchildren, Alexandra Jones of Roanoke, Virginia, Austin Jones of Greensboro, and Graham and Lily Guzynski of Raleigh. The family would like to thank Luba Griffin for her compassionate care of Gardner during his last years and especially during the last weeks of his life, when he was separated from his family due to COVID 19. A private service will be held at Springmoor Retirement Community with a memorial service for friends and loved ones to be held at a later date. In lieu of flowers, memorials may be sent to the Parkinson's Foundation, 200 SE 1st Street, Suite 800, Miami, FL 33131, www.parkinson.org. Arrangements by Brown-Wynne, Saint Mary's St., Raleigh.

Gardner married Elizabeth Irene Messersmith, daughter of Graham Berry Messersmith and Unknown, on 13 Sep 1959 in VA.