Jones, Larry 1940-

PERSONAL:

Born 1940, in Scottsville, KY; married; wife's name Frances; children: Allen, Larri Sue. Education: Oklahoma City University, B.A., 1967; Phillips Seminary, Enid, OK, B.Div., 1967.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Feed the Children, P.O. Box 36, Oklahoma City, OK 73101-0036.

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, administrator, evangelist, social activist, and minister. Feed the Children (an international Christian nonprofit organization), cofounder and president, 1979—. Minister in the Southern Baptist Church.

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Caring Award, 1993; Oklahoman of the Year, 1994; Humanitarian Award, National Conference of Christians and Jews, 1995; H.J. Heimlich Humanitarian Award, 2000; received humanitarian commendations from Armenia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Iran, and Lebanon.

WRITINGS:

(With C.A. Roberts) Hustler for the Lord, Logos International (Plainfield, NJ), 1978.

How to Make It to Friday, foreword by Gene Garrison, Harvest House Publishers (Irvine, CA), 1980.

Practice to Win, Tyndale House Publishers (Wheaton, IL), 1982.

How to Bend without Breaking, F.H. Revell (Old Tappan, NJ), 1987.

The Fifteen-Second Secret, T. Nelson Publishers (Nashville, TN), 1991.

(With Ken Abraham) Life's Interruptions, God's Opportunities: Lessons from the Good Samaritan, J. Countryman (Nashville, TN), 2002.

Black Box (novel), Whitaker House (New Kensington, PA), 2004.

Keep Walking: One Man's Journey to Feed the World One Child at a Time (memoir), Doubleday (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Larry Jones is a writer, minister, and social activist who provides humanitarian aid to hungry children around the world. A native of Scottsville, Kentucky, Jones was a promising high-school basketball player who attended Oklahoma City University on an athletic scholarship. He later earned a bachelor of divinity degree from Phillips Seminary in Enid, Oklahoma, and became a minister in the Southern Baptist Church.

Jones is the cofounder of the nonprofit Christian organization Feed the Children, which he started with his wife, Frances. From humble beginnings on the Joneses' kitchen table, Feed The Children has grown into one of the largest charitable organizations in the world, as noted on the Feed the Children Web site.

Jones was inspired to found the charity in 1979 after attending a conference in Port au Prince, Haiti, where he witnessed the deep poverty, hunger, and hardship endured by many Haitians and their children. Realizing that there was a great surplus of food in America, Jones devised plans to ship surplus wheat to Haiti so that starving children could have bread to eat. Feed the Children has since distributed nearly 200 million tons of food and essentials to families in the United States and abroad. The organizationn has also distributed millions of dollars worth of additional aid and necessities, including clothing, medical supplies, toys, books, and other items. Feed the Children has been among the first responders to natural and man-made disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, the southeast Asian tsunami of 2004, and the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York City.

In Keep Walking: One Man's Journey to Feed the World One Child at a Time, Jones describes his humanitarian work and the development and mission of the organization that occupies such a prominent place in his life. The book covers his early childhood, his initial efforts as a preacher and minister, and his philosophy of enduring difficulties, as illustrated by the book's title. Recounting the origins and development of Feed the Children, Jones explains how he initially wanted to be a minister but gave up that occupation in order to more actively and materially help the needy. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Jones's story "inspirational."

Jones is also the author of the survival thriller Black Box, in which a commercial jet en route from Hong Kong is shot down when bad weather and an inebriated copilot mistakenly direct the plane into Chinese airspace. After a rough crash landing in Bhutan, only seven passengers survive: a vain U.S. senator, a self-made African American journalist, a faithful bishop experiencing the pains of unrelieved guilt, a pregnant and unmarried flight attendant, an American expatriate, a marketing executive for a tobacco company, and the plane's pilot. In the freezing temperatures and mountainous terrain, survival becomes more and more difficult. Even among this battered and desperate group, however, secrets remain, and deception and betrayal plague their every step toward rescue. In the book's subtext, most of the characters pursue spiritual as well as physical salvation, seeking their own version and interpretation of God. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called the novel an "earnest but mediocre debut," but also a novel with a "fine premise."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Jones, Larry, Keep Walking: One Man's Journey to Feed the World One Child at a Time (memoir), Doubleday (New York, NY), 2007.

PERIODICALS

MBR Bookwatch, April 1, 2008, Carol Hoyer, review of Keep Walking.

Publishers Weekly, September 27, 2004, review of Black Box, p. 39; October 22, 2007, review of Keep Walking, p. 50.

Voice of Youth Advocates, June 1, 1984, review of Practice to Win, p. 85.

ONLINE

National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Web site,http://naia.cstv.com/ (October 20, 2006), author profile.