From the Senate floor to the HHS auditorium, former U.S. Senator Doug Jones has committed himself to public service, no matter the scale of the stage. On March 10, he shared this life mission and the importance of serving others with HHS students.
“Study talks” have become a key component of HHS’s character-development program. Monthly guest speakers share about important character attributes with students during their fifth-period study time.
Sen. Jones served from 2018 to 2021 and was previously the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama where he successfully prosecuted two Ku Klux Klan members involved in the 1963 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in Birmingham.
As a lawyer and then politician, Jones was led by his guiding belief in serving others. He worked on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs as well as the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions to find bipartisan agreements and protect American citizens’ rights and well-being.
“When you’re a Democrat from Alabama, you’ve got a heck of a lot of challenges,” Jones said. “I was lucky enough to get elected in a special election after Senator Jeff Sessions became the Attorney General, knowing, quite frankly, that three years later I probably wouldn’t get reelected. I did not, but I did my job to serve the people of this state, and I couldn’t please everybody all the time. I pleased a lot, just not enough to win for reelection.”
Jones now dedicates himself to sharing lessons from his career, seeing it as his calling to further spread the values of good governance and character. Interacting with students specifically is important to Jones. He sees it as a chance to shape future professionals and to even learn something himself.
“It means a lot to come and talk to students,” Jones said. “I find they generally ask the best questions, and sooner or later, they’re going to have the right to vote, they’re going to be seeking public office, and they’re going to be going into their careers. So any time that I have a chance to talk and perhaps influence just one or two people, it’s a big deal because at one point I was sitting out there and I want people to know that there’s a life beyond high school and college.”
During his talk with HHS students, Jones shared several of his experiences from his time as a lawyer taking pro bono cases to his role in providing widows of veterans benefits to emphasize his belief in the importance of serving others. He hopes that students will hear his message and understand that they too can make an impact.
“Don’t think for a second that you don’t have that opportunity to make a difference as a teenager,” Jones said. “It may only be making a difference in one of your classmate’s lives who’s having some personal struggles for whatever reason. It could be addiction, it could be other mental issues that they don’t want to talk about, but you know that you can help that person. It’s things like that that are so fulfilling. They not only help that person, I promise you it will help you too. It will help you learn, it will help you grow, it will help you become a better member of the community. And, God knows, we need more better people in every community.”
As students step beyond high school and college, Jones hopes they’ll carry service as a guiding principle. His advice? Put others first.
“One thing is that as you go forward, remember, it’s not all about you,” Jones said. “It’s not about yourself. In today’s world, almost everything that we do is connected to someone or something else, and we need to think about that.”
He added another closing remark, urging students to be mindful of patience in their pursuits.
“I think people need to be patient and smell the roses,” Jones said. “I hear a lot about, ‘live like there’s no tomorrow’ but I’m not so sure I agree with that. I know what they’re saying, but there is going to be a tomorrow, there is going to be a reckoning, and you need to make your choices knowing that there’s going to be a tomorrow.”
HHS Vice Principal Marcus Harris is one of six faculty members on the Homewood Way Team. They’re in charge of emphasizing the six attributes of the Homewood Spirit to students through character education programs, including study talks.
“We want to make a big impact with the six attributes of the Homewood way,” Harris said. “So the goal is to have some sort of devotion each month to a specific attribute of that Homewood way. We’ve really liked having study talks as a way to make that happen. We want students to get something out of this, something meaningful to their lives. We’re just trying to plant those seeds with the study talks.”
The team meets and decides upon the month’s topic, and then brainstorms community figures as candidates to come and speak about the attribute. Freshman counselor Emily Sarah Vines specifically got Doug Jones on board through a personal connection, an easy choice to speak about serving others.
“He just embodies the spirit of serving others,” Harris said. “As far as the service that he’s done with the U.S. government, but also with his personal career as a lawyer, he just embodies the service we want our students to adopt.”
Harris is thankful HHS students have the opportunity to hear from such an impactful figure.
“It’s phenomenal for our students to be able to see and hear from someone like this,” Harris said. “It’s not every day you have a U.S. senator come to Homewood High School, it’s just such a great opportunity.”
