Floyd James "Pete" Jones Maribelle named her son Floyd James, but from the beginning, he was always Pete. You'd hear it called out all the time, across restaurants and stadium bleachers, in hardware stores and grocery aisles-usually by people who recognized the man with the big hands and the dimpled grin who once helped them buy a table saw. Or choose a new dishwasher. Or appreciate the strengths of the Fort Wayne TinCaps starting lineup. For a private man, he seemed to know everyone. If you were with Pete, you simply got used to it. Pete Jones died on the morning of Saturday, April 11, 2020 at Rush-Copley Medical Center in Aurora, Illinois. He was 74 years old. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to James "Step" Jones and Maribelle Witt, Pete spent his youth getting himself into (and back out of) harmless trouble. He'd tell the stories with rueful pride. The time he got caught trading his milk money for crayons. The time he sassed his mother and promptly dodged a fast-flying can of peaches. The time he raced through a "gypsy" camp with his cousins. The time he was found playing hooky at a friend's house by his grandfather, who whooped his 6-year-old butt the whole way home. His boyhood stories were marked by mischief that Pete would never entirely outgrow. Anyone who ever leaned in for a kiss from him knew they might get a lick on the cheek instead of a peck, but it was worth the risk. That irrepressible humor helped Pete navigate a world where he often stood out. He was the small black boy who'd tuck himself into quiet train car corners while his father, a maître d' on the California Zephyr line, worked the dining car. He was the cousin whose family left St. Louis for Nebraska, but always came back to his grandmother's house for the long, hot stretch of summer. As a teen, he was one of a handful of African American students to attend Lincoln's largest Catholic high school, Pious X. And at the University of Nebraska-where the black student body wouldn't top 200 until the 1970s-you didn't need glasses to pick Pete out of the Varsity Glee Club's photos. He stood out. And then he and his mother moved to Indiana, and Pete did something that was bound to get noticed. He fell in love. Pete met Patricia Davis during student registration at Indiana University Kokomo. She was clever and levelheaded, he was charming and sentimental. When they ran into each other again at a local mall where they both had part-time jobs, they struck up a casual friendship. Neither one bothered to protect their heart. Why would they? As Patricia would tell her youngest daughter years later, falling in love with each other wasn't a possibility. He was black. She was white. This was Indiana. It wasn't easy. But a year after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and just two years after the Supreme Court lifted the ban on interracial marriage, Pete and Pat were married by a sympathetic Lutheran minister. Not in the church, that would've been too scandalous. And not with the full support of their families, though that would come with time. It hardly mattered. In 1970, the Joneses had their first daughter, Laura Lynne. In 1976, they welcomed Erin Elizabeth. Pete's job at Sears would become a nearly 40-year career, and as his girls grew up, he learned to golf and to woodwork. He served in the US Marine Reserves. He tried (and failed) to instill in his daughters a passion for football and softball, the sports he'd played in school. He liked jazz and drum lines. He had a love-hate relationship with politics and gadgets. He perfected his dry rub recipe and learned to make a truly mean breakfast. He constantly mangled the English language, inspiring 50% of all Jones family jokes. He planned family vacations to California and Texas, Toronto and Colorado Springs. He attended church regularly, and found comfort there when Patricia died of cancer in 2005. He fell in love with his grandchildren and with the family's regular trips to Disney World, often asking about the next vacation before the current one was over. He started dialysis. And he never stopped running into old friends and old customers who'd light up at the sight of him and stop to say a quick hello. He will be remembered by his many friends and colleagues, next-door neighbors who became family, and the loving tangle of cousins and in-laws he leaves behind. He is survived by his daughters, Laura Radzanowski, her husband, Mark, and their children, Mya and Leo, of Oswego, Illinois, and Erin Elizabeth Jones of Madison, Wisconsin. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, funeral services will be postponed. Donations in his name should be made to the American Diabetes Association, P.O. Box 15829, Arlington, VA 22215, or 1-800-342-2383. Condolences may be shared at www.dunnfamilyfuneralhome.com.