Used imagination to inspire kids via books, TV

During an impoverished childhood in rural Virginia, with segregation still the law, Karen Lee Hurtt Jones learned to read by sitting next to a student who could afford a textbook. Her stepfather, James F. Hurtt, had to teach her the alphabet by having her write each letter in the dirt with a stick.

Eventually she would write poems for her mother to tune out her tough existence, including her job during the tobacco harvest of removing nasty bugs from tobacco leaves as she stacked them.

Segregation followed her family to Pittsburgh, where she earned a certificate from the Optician Institute but was the only one in her class not to get a job.

She told family members that optical shop owners said white customers were reluctant to have an African-American woman help them try on glasses — and touch their faces.

That, too, helped fuel her creative spirit, resulting in poetry books and the children’s stories that, in turn, provided ideas for“Imagination Way ”— her monthly children’s show broadcast on Pittsburgh Community Television Channel 21 for more than 20 years.

Her emphasis was literacy while addressing bullying and discrimination,

encouraging self-confidence and determination to overcome life’s obstacles.

“Mom grew up in poverty and used her imagination to overcome adversity,” said her daughter, Latara J. Jones, 43, who lives in her parents’ home in Friendship. “My mom touched the lives of many people.”

Mrs. Jones, 67, died Feb. 6 from stroke complications. In her final months in a nursing home, she worked with her husband, Theodore “Flip” Jones, 69, to write children’s stories including a final one about bees. “For a poor black family

rural Virginia in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a lot of bigotry and hatred and issues of getting housing. They had to use an outhouse,” Mr. Jones said. “But all of that never stood in the way of learning. My wife was one of the most intelligent women I ever knew.”

Graduating with honors from Westinghouse High School in 1968, she then earned an associate business degree from the Community College of Allegheny County. After working various jobs, she met Mr. Jones in 1972 and they married in November 1973.

About that time she enrolled at Robert Morris College ( now University) while volunteering at the Youth Division of Community Action Pittsburgh.

The University of Pittsburgh’s Kuntu Writer’s Workshop published her first story in 1978, at a time when she was raising her children.

From 1986 until 1995, she worked as a stenographer/ typist for the Allegheny County Health Department, where she became friends with Therese “Terry” Fisher, now of Glendora, Calif., who was acting chief engineer for the department’s Division of Air Quality.

She described Mrs. Jones as “multifaceted and very humble, caring and loving.”

“The things that stand out the most were her incredible charisma and that incredible, infectious laugh,” said Ms. Fisher, who noted that job circumstances were tough for Mrs. Jones as an African American and a good worker with a strong personality.

“If would have been white with that personality, people wouldn’t have frowned upon it,” she said. “But there definitely was a discrimination factor going on at that time.”

Mrs. Jones left the health department after an injury and went on disability while continuing to write. In 2003 she enrolled at Chatham University to pursue a creative-writing degree she never completed.

All the while, her “Imagination Way” shows on PCTV 21 featured stories told on camera with props, and flat-faced dolls she made, stuffed dolls, along with her children and family members as characters.

A favorite story involved a weasel on trial in a barnyard for killing a chick named Ernie, only to be acquitted when Ernie reappears and testifies that the weasel, in fact, had just saved him from a hawk attack.

“I wanted to give them somewhere to put their minds because some kids have big problems,” she said in a 2006 Post-Gazette article.

Her self-published books included “Stories from the Television Show ‘Imagination Way,’” “Giggle with Friends from imagination Way” and “A Rainbow Collection of Poetry.”

“When you put together an adventurous monkey who can read and write, farm animals testifying in court and a stuffed cat thirsty for a glass of KoolAid, “you have the ingredients” for one of Karen Lee Jones’ children’s book, the Post-Gazette article said.

Mrs. Jones won first place in poetry contests with poems published in several anthologies, her family said.

She also wrote stories under a pen name for various African-American romance magazines.

In 2008, she served as keynote speaker for a conference of the Texas Association for Family Child Care, among other accomplishments.

“My wife was all about family, children and education,” Mr. Jones said. “If you have confidence in your work you can push farther than you can imagine. Never give up on what you believe to be true.”

In addition to her husband and daughter, Mrs. Jones is survived by another daughter, Belinda Narvaez of Turtle Creek; one son Christopher L. Jones of Churchill; a sister, Leslie Lemon McKeesport; one brother, David Nichols of Phoenix, Ariz.; and eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.