Remembering Captain Wes: An authentic, kind life
Jason Wilmoth For Coeur Voice | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 6 years, 3 months AGO
I went to a workshop recently, the purpose of which was to discover your designed purpose.
I’ve always been envious of people who know their role in life, I’ve spent my entire life asking the question “What is my purpose?”
I remember having a conversation with Wes Jones on the mailboat about this subject as we crossed Lake Pend Oreille.
He knew his purpose. He had the ability to serve people in a way that was so selfless that everyone he met instantly became his friend.
Wes simply loved people, and he met a lot of people in his job.
Wes delivered the mail. His route was unlike any other around, though. Instead of walking down the sidewalk every afternoon underneath the shade of maple trees with the iconic blue bag across his shoulders or driving the classic white mail jeep down the country road, Captain Wes loaded the mail onto an aluminum hull boat and travelled across the fifth-deepest lake in the United States to small enclaves of humanity on the nearly wild eastern shore.
Captain Wes also gave tours of the beautiful lake which he called his office. For a small fee folks could ride the boat along with him and deliver the mail to Lakeview or Granite Creek, at the end of these rides, Wes would idle along the southern shore of Buttonhook Bay, underneath the “slides” where only bald eagles and mountain goats resided.
As the Liquid Limo began to grow, Wes began providing every kind of service imaginable to anyone who found themselves on the lake. I once helped him with a kite surfer who had hired Wes to take him out on the lake. We spent hours on the lake launching and retrieving the kite as the summer sun began to set.
Eventually Wes even became an ordained minister so that he could marry couples in one of the most spectacular settings I have ever seen.
My family became very close with Wes, especially my wife and youngest daughter. They were drawn to his patience and sincerity. The best of Wes shone through in his relationship with my daughter Mariah. Wes took Mariah out on the boat once when my wife and I were desperate for a break from parenthood. She helped him deliver the mail.
Within a few days, Wes delivered a book for Mariah which he had made for her, entitled “Mariah and the Mailboat.” Wes took the time to write a story about their adventures and then, complete with pictures, print it out for her.
“Then there was the time he built her a zipline outside of the three-story treehouse that stood above the melodious creek flowing through his property,” my wife Karen reminded me.
He had built the treehouse with his own daughters when they were closer to Mariah’s age, Karen said.
“And you could see that Wes was taken back to those memories by the time he spent with Mariah. How he didn’t grow tired of catching her at the end of that zipline, over and over, is beyond me. She just kept saying, again! again!” Karen recalled.
So many of our adventures on the lake were made possible by Wes. The times we camped on secret beaches, rock-climbing adventures, or when we just needed a moment of peace after a hectic week. Without even being asked, Wes would watch for Karen when she was out paddling on the lake on one of her own adventures.
He really was the “steward of the lake”.
I once hired Wes to take a few friends and I up to Granite point to go rock climbing.
We tied the boat off to a cliff that came straight up out of the water, and we climbed from the bow while Wes watched. He asked lots of questions about climbing, full of curiosity about something he had no understanding of or inclination toward. Then he surprised us by pulling out a little barbeque and grilling us some bratwursts. He simply said, “All part of the service here at the liquid limo”.
The vision that will always remain in my memory, though, happened often over the summer.
My wife and I moved our family out to Bayview at the beginning of summer. We spent the summer swimming off the dock at the public boat launch down the street. We would be swimming and see the boat round the corner then cruise down along the line of houseboats. Wes would step out onto the dock if full tuxedo and visit as he waited for clients to arrive.
Understand, Wes really loved people. He loved to go all out for them.
Some people are the type that rob you of your energy, or life force. You always feel worse for being near them. Captain James Wesley Jones was not that type of person.
Everyone always felt blessed because of him. He made them feel better. He was a giver and he gave of himself freely.
“Wes and I had many, many conversations on that mail boat. Like myself, Wes was a dreamer. He wrote poetry, made beautiful art and jewelry out of the sticks, rocks and glass which he would find along the shore of our marvelous lake,” Karen wrote to me, in an email about Wes. “He loved music and art and his black Lab, Hank. Above all, though, Wes loved people.
I have never met anyone with a kinder heart. I took him last summer to meet my 94-year-old grandmother and he, of course, charmed her socks off. I accompanied him on many ‘tours’ on the Liquid Limo. I was always referred by him as the ‘Adventure Goddess’, complete with name tag and all. Everyone adored Wes, everyone. He will always be remembered, and forever missed.”
As you navigate what comes next, Captain, I pray that you will receive repayment for all that you have given to others in your life.
A wake is caused by the hull of a boat pushing apart the water which rushes back in to fill the space once the boat has passed. All those you have served will feel the emptiness left by your passing, but what will restore that space?
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
- From Whitman’s Preface to ‘Leaves of Grass,’ 1855
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Editor’s note: James Wesley ‘Wes’ Jones was born in Ridgway, Pa., on May 11, 1969. He passed away Feb. 5, 2019.
ARTICLES BY JASON WILMOTH FOR COEUR VOICE

Remembering Captain Wes: An authentic, kind life
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