Interviewer: Preetam Prakash

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I had met with Mr. Jones during the time that I had spent in the area during the summer of 2010. Mr. Jones was the Director of the Vocational Training School in Waynesboro, a position he had occupied since 1995. When I arrived back in the area in 2011, I contacted Mr. Jones and we spoke about what had transpired in the area since I had been away. I mentioned that I was hoping to conduct more oral history interviews with local people about their experiences working in the oil industry. He had said that he would be willing to speak about his time in the oil industry, although he had only spent a short time working offshore. I stopped by the school a few days later and we conducted the interview in Mr. Jones’ office.

Mr. Jones was born in Georgia in 1955. His father had worked for Shell Oil Company and the family had moved around when Mr. Jones was growing up, but he had spent a good portion of his early years in the area around Waynesboro. He mentioned the timber and oil industries as constituting two of the major sources of employment in the area. His father’s family had been in the logging business. Mr. Jones had begun working in oil field construction onshore during summers when he was in high school and had continued working in the oil field while he was attending college. When he finished college Mr. Jones had no desire to teach so he went to work for his family’s logging business until an injury forced him to quit and take up a school teaching job. Soon after, he went to work in the onshore oil fields as a roughneck. He had worked in onshore oil field construction for the majority of his career in the industry and had only worked offshore for the last 6 months in the mid-90s. He mentioned being very impressed with the safety standards that were prevalent in the offshore industry at the time relative to onshore work. Mr. Jones said that he had stopped working in the oil fields and returned to the education field in the mid-90s because he wanted to be with his family. He still missed working in the offshore oil industry and said that he thought about going offshore “every day”.