![]() ![]() Jones’ plays, many of which dealt with Texas history and Lone Star personalities, earned her lasting fame among generations of schoolchildren, according to her memoirs. The women even got extra gas rations from the federal government during World War II because of their educational efforts, especially in rural areas starved for other educational and cultural pursuits. Jones bought for $800 in 1939 for them to use in hauling around the “Doris Goodrich Jones Puppet Theater.” (Gooda died at one of the shows in 1957, at Sanger Elementary, of a heart attack). She travelled with Grace Gooda, the daughter of Southern Baptist missionaries to Brazil, in a panel truck W.G. So I can just at the right moment in history for Waco and environs.”Īs her shows caught on with local schools and then campuses throughout Texas and neighboring states, her cast of characters grew as fast as the number of her sets. “Everybody is so busy with the paperwork in the schools and with TV entertainment and movies,” Jones told an interviewer in 1977, “but they didn’t have that then (when she was starting out). As the years went on, that fee grew to a dime and then a quarter. ![]() She would make $25 a gig ($364 in today’s dollars) performing for women’s clubs in New York.īut in Waco, during the school year, she made a humbler wage: Schools charged children a nickel each to attend her shows, and she split the proceeds with the campus, keeping 60 percent as her fee. The summer of 1935, she started producing puppet shows in Waco, after learning how to make her own puppets and sets during summers spent at Chautauqua. And Jones discovered her passion for the puppetry arts there. Chautauqua was, and remains, the summer resort community that plays host to an internationally-renowned non-profit adult education center. with relatives - especially two spinster aunts who prized independence and inquiry over conventionality. In the early 1930s, she taught at an elementary at Gatesville in addition to giving drama and music instruction at the Methodist Children’s Home in Waco.īut the course of her life was set after many summers spent in Chautauqua, N. Jones’ college career included earning a bachelor of music degree from Southern Methodist University, and coming to Baylor University for a bachelor of education degree and her teaching certificate. Her family moved to Waco in the late 1920s. ![]() The couple wed in 1890, and Doris was the youngest of their four children, three of whom lived to adulthood.Īccording to the oral history Doris Jones provided the Institute for Oral History at Baylor University, when the young Doris came home from classes at age 7 with a “sweetheart,” she was taken out of public school and put into private education. Luther (1865-1934) was the daughter of the president of Baylor Female College (later to became the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor). Her father (1860-1950) was born in Yankee territory “by accident” just as the Civil War was brewing, the family story goes, because his Galveston-based parents had travelled there on business. Waco’s “Puppet Lady” was born April 2, 1902, in Temple, to William Goodrich Jones of New York City and Zollie Luther of Palmyra, Mo. When Jones arrived in local schools in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, she mesmerized her young audiences and inspired many to go home and make their own puppet theaters. Her antics often got her in trouble, but she’d figure a way out of the mess every time. One of her most popular puppets, with black and white audiences alike, was the spunky and mischievous Esmeralda Arimathea Jenkins, a black child known as “Asthma” for short. 14th Street (now part of the Freeman Center’s housing block for folks undergoing drug rehabilitation) with character like The Fiddling Cowboy, Monkeyshines the Brazilian monkey, Senorita Lolita, Sealeg Sailor, Jimmie Scarecrow and an assortment of clowns, dancers, elves and a menagerie of musical instrument-playing critters. Although she never married nor had children of her own, Doris Goodrich Jones of Waco was the mother of hundreds of “little people” - the puppets she created to spin marvelous tales of wisdom and wonder. ![]()
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