Home is where the heart is

 

By Cody Wall

On average, people move 11 times in their life. Unusually, one Windsorite has spent most of her life in one house.

Over the past several decades Eunice Jones, 87, has grown attached to her Windsor home. Although she has seen neighbours come and go and the city change around her, one thing remains the same.  Jones’ parents bought the house located on Pine Street in Windsor in 1930 when Jones was only three months old. Today, Jones still lives in that house and except for few brief years, has never left the neighborhood.

Jones said she fell in love with the neighborhood from a very young age. Often going to nearby Mitchell Park to play and ice skate in the winter with her friends. It is something she said she does not see children doing anymore.

“We couldn’t wait till we could go down to the park on our own,” said Jones. “I couldn’t wait to get home to get my skates on and get down to Mitchell Park until supper time.”

Jones never lost her passion for skating and continued to go to Mitchell Park to skate into her teens. She also started another hobby, dancing. She and her friends would often go to dance at the Masonic Temple.

“They had beautiful dancing areas with really good music,” said Jones.

Jones would eventually marry and for the first time in her life left her family home. She later returned to the house she grew up in with a child of her own, after a divorce.

For 11 years, they lived with Jones’ parents until she decided it was best she and her daughter leave the family home.

“I really broke my mother’s heart because we were really close but it was for the best,” said Jones.

Jones felt that because her daughter was entering her teens and would often spend her time elsewhere, they should move out and give her parents some time by themselves.

Jones stayed in Windsor, moving into an apartment not too far from the family home. She lived in the apartment for the next several years until her father died and left her the house in his will. Jones credited her neighbourhood and neighbours for why she has spent most of her life on Pine Street.

“I love the neighborhood and I have had wonderful neighbours all my life, all the time I’ve lived here,” said Jones.

Today, Jones is a retired executive secretary of 42 years, lives in the house with her cat Rudi, which she saved after the cat’s previous owners left him when they moved away. For fun, Jones takes trips to the casino, goes out for dinner and goes on vacations with her daughter, who said:

“She plans on staying in that home until the day she leaves this earth.”