…about F Rob Jones (San Diego) and his infamous grandfather.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/news/story?id=3047543
[QUOTE]Back in Georgetown, most members of the basketball team were spending their day off at a movie, “Company of Killers.” Jim Jr. got a horrifying message from his father over the ham radio.
“He was telling me … what happened to the congressman,” he recalls, “that we would be blamed for people wanting to leave and the injustices against Peoples Temple. He said that people were gonna lay their lives down, that they were gonna commit revolutionary suicide. It still echoes in my head how I argued with my father … like, ‘Why are we doing this? Isn’t there another way?’”
…
When it was over, more than 900 people were dead. The Rev. Jones was dead from a gunshot. The players on the basketball team had lost everyone they loved. Jim Jr. had lost his parents, his wife and their unborn child.
…
Playing basketball had kept the players on the team away from the horror. It saved their lives. But they felt their presence in Jonestown on that day might have changes things – and their guilt was overwhelming.
“For many years I had a hard time dealing with that,” says Jim Jr. “The survivor guilt. Why did I survive? I blamed basketball, ‘If I wasn’t selfish playing basketball, maybe I could have made a difference.’”
Jim Jr. returned to San Francisco, eventually married again, had three boys and put his life back together. But he avoided the game he had always enjoyed, until his eldest son brought it back.
“It wasn’t until Robert showed an interest that I started coaching him,” says Jim Jr. “And I’ve developed a love for it again.”
“I thank God every day,” says Rob, now a freshman forward at the University of San Diego. “I’m a real lucky man just to have a father and that he’s there supporting me in whatever I do, no matter what.”[/QUOTE]
http://usdtoreros.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/mtt/jones_rob00.html