Michael O. Jones, a retired Blade staff writer who in years of diligent reporting brought readers news of court cases, police matters, and local government, died Thursday in ProMedica Toledo Hospital. He was 80.

He had fallen a week earlier in his Sylvania Township driveway. The death was ruled accidental, said Dr. Diane Scala-Barnett, Lucas County coroner, with medical co-morbidities as contributing factors. He had congestive heart failure, his wife, Dr. Monica Young, said.

Mr. Jones had been Sylvania Township’s public information officer since about 2010. He attended meetings of township trustees, interviewed township staff, and wrote articles about township happenings and projects.

“It’s been a great fit. He really enjoyed it too,” said John Jennewine, a township trustee. “He had a vital role. When you’ve got construction projects and zoning, you’ve got to keep people informed. It was a natural extension of his journalistic writing ability that helped us out.’’

Mr. Jones retired from The Blade in March, 2006. He’d had a role at the newspaper since his teen years, when he helped his father, Eddie Jones, a well-known sports writer, with box scores. 

“That ink just got into his blood,” Dr. Young said.

Mr. Jones was among several young reporters hired within a few years of each other during the 1960s. 

“We all enjoyed each other and built a special kinship, so losing him is difficult,” said Thomas Walton, retired editor of The Blade. 

“He was first and foremost an excellent reporter who did it all at one time or another,” Mr. Walton said. “What I remember most is his time as the police reporter. Few newspaper beats require more attention to detail than the police beat, and Mike did it well. He knew the cops and they knew him. There was a mutual respect and trust, but the police also understood Mike’s first obligation was to get the news to Blade readers.”

Mr. Jones readily won the confidence of sources, from the Safety Building to the Lucas County Courthouse to township offices and One Government Center.

“He was a stand-up guy and reporter,” said Frank Stiles, a retired Toledo police detective sergeant who became an investigator for the Lucas County prosecutor's office. “When I was assigned and working the heavy felony cases, I saw and talked to him almost daily. He wrote numerous stories about my new and most active, heinous felony arrests and cases, and you could always count on him for his thorough, accurate, and complete reporting.”

Mr. Jones had extended stints as The Blade’s courts reporter. Judges, prosecutors, and others in the courthouse called him “Scoop.” Dale Emch, who succeeded him on the courts beat, said: “Just by the fact that Mike Jones vouched for me made my life so much easier. I gained instant credibility with the judges and prosecutors.

“Mike had so much respect in that courthouse community. That was conferred upon me when I tried to fill his very big shoes,” said Mr. Emch, who now is Toledo’s law director. 

Judges, prosecutors, and attorneys knew Mr. Jones “was such a straight shooter that what they said would be accurately reported,” Mr. Emch said.

Mr. Jones and Tahree Lane, who had been a Blade colleague, had lunch several times a year in retirement. Invariably a former source came over to shake Mr. Jones’ hand.

“He brought his life experience to his work, and that gave him great empathy. Certainly he also had a sense of fairness,” Ms. Lane said. “He seemed to know everybody in town and knew how things worked.”

Off duty, he became a counselor to those who had been convicted of driving while intoxicated, as he had been.

“He was proud of his 17 years of sobriety,” Dr. Young said.

More than a decade ago, he persuaded a man convicted of a wrong-way freeway crash that killed five to record a video, so that others could hear directly from “a guy in his 20s with his future obliterated,” Mr. Jones told The Blade in 2013. His hope was that those hearing the stories of that man and other inmates realized that drunken driving is “an all-in bet.”

“Most of us think it will never happen to us,” Mr. Jones said in 2013. “In Texas Hold ’em [poker] you can have a really, really good hand. Odds are, you’re not going to kill anybody. Odds are, you’re going to get home, but the bet is all-in. It’s everything. It’s your entire future. It could be your life.”

Michael O’Brien Jones was born July 22, 1942, in Champaign, Ill., to Jane and Eddie T. Jones. His father had become sports editor of the local newspaper the year before. The family moved in 1944 when the elder Mr. Jones became executive sports editor of the Minneapolis Times. After that paper folded four years later, the elder Mr. Jones joined The Blade sports staff.

“He was pretty much imbued with the idea of working for a newspaper because of his dad. He knew all of the guys in the sports department, because he grew up around them,” said Pat Green, a retired Blade staff writer to whom he was formerly married.

He was a graduate of Central Catholic High School and attended the University of Toledo. After he was drafted during the Vietnam War, his Army duty essentially was to be a reporter in Pleiku in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam, Mrs. Green said.

He rooted for the Chicago Cubs through good seasons and bad. Annually on his birthday, until age 75, he rode his bicycle the number of miles he had reached in years. 

At their get-togethers, “he would talk about his kids the entire time and how proud he was and tell me in great detail what each son or daughter was doing in glowing terms,” Ms. Lane said.

He delighted in being a grandparent, Dr. Young said.

Honors he received included in 1990 the outstanding journalism award from the Ohio Academy of Trial Lawyers.

Surviving are his wife, Dr. Monica Young, whom he married Aug. 13, 1983; sons, Michael and Matthew Jones; daughters, Rachel Geddes and Sarah Jones; brother, Martin Westlin, and four grandchildren.

There will be no services. A reception will be held from 1-3 p.m. Saturday at Georgio's Cafe International in downtown Toledo.

The family suggests tributes to the Old Newsboys Goodfellow Assocation or the Monastery of the Visitation on Parkside Boulevard.

First Published January 29, 2023, 5:00 a.m.