In many ways, Roger and Sandra Jones are just like any other
married couple. In many other ways, they’re not.
”
He does most of the cooking,
”
Sandra said,
”
and I clean up most of the time.
”
In many ways, Roger and Sandra Jones are just like any other married couple. In many other ways, they’re not.
“He does most of the cooking,” Sandra said, “and I clean up most of the time.”
Now that Roger is retired, they often run errands together or go out for a bike rides when the weather cooperates. They also are members of The Church of Latter Day Saints in Gilroy.
“We try to (make it every week),” Roger said. “We were at church last weekend for about eight hours.”
Roger and Sandra spent the whole day handing out invitations to their 20th wedding anniversary celebration next weekend at their home at Wagon Wheel Mobile Estates.
And while a 20-year anniversary may seem somewhat commonplace, the Jones’ relationship beat the odds. That’s because both Roger and Sandra are handicapped. According to Sandra, most people like her and her husband never get married or don’t live long enough to ever reach such a milestone.
“People don’t think the handicapped can be married this long,” she said.
While even the day’s seemingly simple tasks can be difficult for the couple – neither one can drive a car – Sandra, 54, and Roger, 53, seem like a perfect fit.
“The things that are difficult for Sandra are easy for Roger, and things that are difficult for Roger are easy for Sandra,” said Gina O’Sullivan, one of Sandra’s five sisters. “In that way, their relationship really supports the tough things in their life they deal with.”
While they sit in the living room of the Gilroy home they’ve shared since a few months after their Feb. 18, 1984, wedding, it’s easy to see in Sandra’s eyes that the two are every bit as in love with one another as the day they exchanged their vows.
“We’ve had a real good marriage,” she said as she held Roger’s hand and looked over at him with a smile. “We’ve never had a fight.”
Roger isn’t as outspoken as Sandra when it comes to talking about his emotions, with almost a boyish shyness about him when asked about his feelings, but Sandy is there to add the smile and the color to the straightforward stories he tells.
Roger has brain damage and epilepsy as a result of a high fever he suffered as a child. Doctors told his parents that he would be limited to the mental capacity of a 15- or 16-year-old.
While he used to suffer from epileptic seizures, he hasn’t suffered a single one since he and Sandra were married (“Probably the heavenly Father helped him a lot,” Sandra says). However, every once in a while while speaking, Roger’s face tightens up and he stammers a little before catching himself.
Still, Roger is a whiz when it comes to numbers and memory. For nearly every name Sandra brings up as she tells the couple’s life story, Roger can recite the person’s phone number. When talking about the past, Roger easily can figure out how old he was and what year it was for every event.
“He’s very good with numbers,” Sandra said. “He gives me the numbers when I can’t remember.”
Sandra was born with cerebral palsy. She doesn’t have full control over her muscles, wears a hearing aid and has slowed speech. But that’s where Roger steps in. Whenever Sandy leaves off or gets stuck, he is there.
“It’s sometimes hard for people to understand Sandy, and he fills in the holes,” said O’Sullivan, who has been helping the couple make needed repairs to their home before their anniversary party.
As two decades have passed, not only have Roger and Sandra found more meaning in one another, but they have left a profound mark on nearly everyone they’ve come in contact with.
For the last four years, Roger has shown up at 7:30 a.m. Monday through Thursday at the Gilroy Bowl on Monterey Road to meet Gavilan physical education teacher Paul Latsky. Latsky gives Roger, his teacher’s assistant, the keys to open up the bowling alley, and he turns on the lights and helps get pencils and score sheets out for the community college’s morning bowling class.
“I affectionately call Roger my right-hand man, and I think he takes pride in that title,” Latsky said. “He’s a genuinely sincere person, and when he says he’s going to be there, he’s there. You can always count on Roger.”
Before retirement, Roger had several different jobs, including working at Bonfante Gardens, Taco Bell and even at The Dispatch as a newspaper deliveryman.
Sandra accompanies Roger, whose bowling average is a not-so-shabby 150, to the alley twice a week.
“I’m not a very good bowler, though,” Sandra conceded. “I just like to go with him. I go because he asked me to come watch.”
In return for all his help, Latsky is happy to help Roger with things he can’t do – like helping him with his ties.
“From time to time when the knot comes undone or he gets a new one, he asks me to do an old Windsor knot for him,” Latsky said.
Once Roger gets the knot the way he likes it, he loosens it enough to pull it over his head so he won’t have to retie it later.
Since the couple can’t drive, they depend on taxis, a VTA outreach car and, most often, bicycles to get around.Roger stops in at Sunshine Bicycles in Gilroy several times a month for basic maintenance, flat tires and other problems with his primary form of transportation.
Norm Currie, a partner in Sunshine Bicycles who said he plans to make it to the couple’s anniversary party, gave Sandra a brand new adult tricycle, worth about $400, as a gift last month.
“They’re good people and good customers of ours,”Currie said. “They depend on their bikes to get around. The tricycle gives Sandra the stability that she needs.”
And when their bikes can’t get them as far as they want to go, they won’t even think of letting that stop them.
“They’re really tenacious, those sons of guns,” said Jerry Hillesheim, a 78-year-old friend and neighbor who helps out with difficult chores around the house and drives them to church. “I remember one time they wanted to go to Oakland, but there was nobody who could take them there. By golly, they went through the transit schedules and figured out a way to get up there using public transportation.”
However, Roger and Sandra also have had to overcome painful moments during their marriage.
“We’ve had our ups and downs, but that’s what life is all about,” Sandra said.
When Sandra talks about the tough times in their marriage, in particular she’s referring to an incident two years ago when she was raped by a man from the mobile home park.
The man was supposed to give an estimate for repairing the outside of their home. Instead, he came in to the house and forced himself on Sandra while Roger was at work.
“Roger said to report it, or it would happen to other people,” Sandra said.
The man was arrested, but Sandra now refuses to open the door to strangers unless Roger is home.
While that may seem like a hard topic to talk about, Sandra thinks of it as a defining moment of Roger’s devotion.
“He supported me the whole time,” she said. “That was the most important thing he helped me through.”
Roger and Sandra first met in their 30s while at an East Bay Area workshop for the handicapped. At the time, Sandra was in an off-and-on relationship, but she could tell Roger wanted to ask her out.
“I knew Roger liked me. He kept looking at me, things like that. He kept telling me to break up with the guy,” Sandra said. “So I told (my boyfriend) this was the last time he was breaking up with me, that he better make up his mind.”
It wasn’t long after they broke up for good that Roger came over and asker her out.
But when the couple’s relationship got serious, not everyone was happy about a possible marriage.
“His father gave us permission to get married, but his mother didn’t want us to,” Sandra said.
“Because I was her baby,” Roger added. “But I wasn’t her baby.”
Roger said his younger sister already had gotten married, and he was willing to get thrown out of the house to take a chance with Sandra. He didn’t even send his mother an invitation to the wedding.
Still, the support from family members including Sandra’s mother, Georgia Miller, of Morgan Hill, and George’s father, Edward Jones, who lives near Bakersfield, have helped the couple with what few things they can’t accomplish together.
“I’m grateful for my family. We never would have made it (without them).” Sandra said.
For Valentine’s Day, the couple is planning to attend a dance at the church, then they will continue the preparations for their big party.
After that, they plan to look forward to their next 20 years together – and beyond.
“We’ll probably stay together until we die,” Sandra said. “Our marriage is for eternity. That’s what our goal is.”
