William “Bill” Jones was born in 1960 and grew up in District Heights, Maryland, where he lives now. He served in the U.S. Air Force and remained in the reserves when he ended his active duty career. He attended Washington College where he studied history and political science, and eventually went to law school and later earned a master’s in history at the University of New Hampshire. He returned to Maryland when his parents began to age and worked in the intelligence community as a lawyer. Bill’s father Parker was born in 1914 and grew up on a farm in Centennial, West Virginia, on the border of Virginia. He came to Washington during the Great Depression to earn a living and make something of himself off the farm. Parker worked his way up in the brewery, working in the ice plant while he went to school, and eventually becoming the brewery’s comptroller and closing out the account books and finances of the brewery when it closed. He soon found work at the Mechanics’ Union where he was their chief accountant.