24/7 caregiver

When Cheryl Jones was little, her mother worked as a housekeeper for several wealthy Roanokers. As her employers aged, the job naturally shifted to caregiving.

Ruby Jones Dawson was divorced and raising eight children on her own when one employer-friend suggested she enroll in a program to become a nurse, which she did.

Cheryl Jones studies for a nursing exam while making dinner at her home.

Jones followed her lead. She took over her mother’s position tending to the family of civic leader and funeral-home president Lawrence Hamlar, a relationship that spanned four decades, ending with Hamlar’s death in 2003.

She’d been studying at Virginia Western Community College to become a nurse herself since 1993. But her work as a caregiver, both paid and unpaid, often got in the way, forcing her to quit.

Now in her early 50s, Jones is divorced with two teenagers at home. During the day she works for Family Service, and she spends many of her off hours tending elderly neighbors.

During a recent visit with Mother Bass, she took a frantic call from a neighbor named Lucille Blackwell, an 83-year-old diabetic who requires home care, typically five hours a day. Known as “Big Mama” throughout the Rugby neighborhood where she lives, Blackwell needed to go to the doctor for an eye infection.

But her home-care aide hadn’t shown up that day, and Blackwell’s children were either at work or sick themselves. Jones called around until she finally reached someone — her own adult daughter, as it happened — who drove Blackwell to the doctor.