Born
July 9, 1902, died October 31, 1986. He is buried at the Indian cemetery,
Ponca City, Oklahoma, across from his father, Joseph Hubbard Jones.
Lee Otis Jones was a rare
person who was gifted with many talents and with deep searching
intelligence. This picture accurately depicts his personality. To the
average person he appeared to be a simple man but in reality he was a very
complex man. One had to be constantly alert to grasp the meaning of some
of his teachings through stories. From where came the gift to come into
the very secret person of one's psychic who knows. It may have been an
inherited set of genes stemming from his Welch ancestry. Also, Bellzona
claimed to be a descendant of General Lee and there are stories about how
he was gifted with an ability to entertain children with story telling.
Lee was totally against a materialistic society and lived his belief.
Probably his having been raised among the Osage was partly responsible for
this. Possibly, Bellzona's parents and grandparent's Quaker persuasion may
have contributed to this too. When he died his possessions were so few it
was almost unbelievable. However, for his whole life he guarded these
pictures, always keeping them safely hidden away. About two years before
he died, he began pulling them out, writing on the back the names and what
dates he knew, and telling of the circumstances surrounding the picture.
His inventions made life
much easier while living in rural Oklahoma. He was a believer in
"harnessing" the wind for electricity. The ranch place in Osage
county ran this way. The rotary engine Mazda used he had used years before
it was commonly marketed. His last work was a puzzle to him and he could
never quite solve it, although he worked on it for many hours. Time turned
into the years while he tried to complete the thing. It was dealing with
the creation of energy through momentum with the use of magnetism. He
experimented with many different methods in an effort to accomplish the
motor he wanted to run without fuel. The most successful model was using
magnets set on hinges so they opened and closed as they came around a
wheel. This balancing and over balancing would carry the wheel around
until the next set of magnets reached the top of the wheel and it's own
momentum would carry it on around. The thing ran but not smoothly.
Eventually the jerking motion would slow and stop the movement. If he had
lived in a peaceful world without the harassment of daily living, probably
he would have accomplished this task.
Lee loved the land. He was
grieved by the destruction through pollution of the many beautiful streams
in Oklahoma. He left me with a great appreciation for the wild plants
growing in the area. Orange trees, avocado trees, any seed poked in soil
grew for him and he fed the leaves with rain water, daily. Although he
could have been severely scarred by the many sad events with his family,
his love of music, art, literature and nature kept him stable and happy. |