Black History Month: Continuing A Legacy Of Action And Perseverance
DETROIT (WWJ) -- William Jones Jr. is celebrating his six-year anniversary as CEO of Focus: HOPE while trying to build on the legacy of the late co-founders, Father William Cunningham and Eleanor Josaitis.
"We're still serving a tremendous number of people -- over 43,000 -- not just us, but with a lot of our partners and the food program," Jones said. "That's been extraordinarily effective -- we've got our early childhood center, education center is resurrected, we feel like it's in good hands, it's doing both early head start as well as head start."
Focus: HOPE is also still training people to become machinist and IT professionals. Jones retired from Chrysler in 2008.
"I joined Chrysler at a time when a lot of people were advocating that the American auto industry was dead. I saw it as a tremendous opportunity -- I felt that if Chrysler survived, I could do pretty well," Jones said. "I could probably learn more in a crisis situation in a short amount of time than I could elsewhere at a company that was more comfortable."
"Our mission statement here a Focus: HOPE calls for intelligent and practical action to overcome racism, poverty and injustice," Jones said. "If we all work together to do that, imagine what a city that this would be."
WWJ Newsradio 950 celebrates Black History Month by recognizing our local young African American professionals and their heroes – you can hear these reports throughout the day: 6:20 a.m., 10:40 a.m., 3:40 p.m. and 7:40 p.m.