RALEIGH -- At age 19, Earl Jones was sent to a training center for the blind - blacks only - in Butner to learn how to handle the "demands of daily living" and perhaps how to hold down a job. After 11 months, his teachers fixed him up with a position at the YMCA in downtown Raleigh as a masseur.
The job was pure charity.
For the 47 years since, his clients will agree, Jones is the one who has been doling out the charity - one massage at a time. He has easily done 100,000 over the course of his career.
"It's all in these thumbs," said Jones, holding up ebony digits thickened with years of effort. Those thumbs are powerful enough to knead the thickest of muscle on the heaviest of men, yet sensitive enough to find the knot in your shoulder that keeps you awake at night, the crick in your neck that limits your turning radius, the sciatica that makes sitting through meetings a nightmare.
For Jones, who is legally blind with eyesight dimming more every year, this career has been one built on touch.
Every hour, he greets a new customer, asks about the wife, the latest hunting trip, the Bible study on John or Daniel. He pulls out his bottle of Neutrogena lotion. Shifts the crisp top sheet just so.
Then he lifts his sculpted arms and sets to work.
Jones is in many ways a symbol of a bygone day, a time when the YMCA was men only - and whites only. A time when the Y was less about sweat and more about socializing and networking. He has been masseur to some of the titans of Raleigh business and North Carolina politics: Charlie York, Gov. Terry Sanford, the late Agriculture Commissioner Jim Graham.
"It's like a woman's hairdresser," said Wayne Journegan, vice president of facilities for the YMCA of the Triangle. "People feel like they can tell their masseur anything."
Graham's daughter, Alice Graham Underhill, said she has long wondered how many deals were cut in the locker rooms at the Y. She wondered how many deals Jones has witnessed.
"Whenever Daddy had a big speech to deliver, or a big problem he was working on, his assistant Donna would call and make an appointment with Earl," Underhill said. "When people would call looking for him, she'd say he was at the Y. They thought he took a lot of exercise."
Of course, in those days, taking exercise wasn't about the Stairmaster and spinning classes and yoga.
There was a treadmill - unmotorized. There was a vibrating machine, which featured a strap wrapped around a man's middle that jiggled intensely. There were weights and a few medicine balls.
There was a jacuzzi, a steam room and a sauna. There was a nap room, with six stalls separated by curtains. The cots were later swapped out for four recliners, for "relaxing" with one's eyes closed.
"We even had a mechanical riding bull," Jones recalled.
All that survives of those days are three masseurs and a single on-site barber.
A man's masseur
When Jones was hired, he was one of seven masseurs on staff - each performed eight to 12 massages a day, and members were entitled to daily rubdowns.
Nowadays, a weekly massage is included in memberships purchased before 2004. Newer members have to pay $15 per massage or $100 for a package of 10.
"That's the best deal in town," Jones quipped.
No matter how modern the new Alexander YMCA building is, no matter that half the members are women, Jones and his colleagues still serve only the men.
"I have begged, believe me," said Theresa Kostrzewa, a lobbyist who envies the weekly massages her husband gets from Jones.
There have been changes in the styles of massage that customers like. Used to be, quick chopping motions up and down the back were popular; now the emphasis is more on pressure points.
In the 1980s, Jones was sent to a school in Fort Lauderdale for more formal training in massage therapy. But longtime clients say that his skill is natural, not taught.
"He is a therapist as much as a masseur," said Calvin Mitchell, 77, a retired DOT engineer. "The thumbs are the treasure finders. They find the knots and get them out. Earl keeps me going. Really."
Lou Pucillo, an N.C. State point guard from 1955 to '59, said his routine is simple. He walks two miles, bikes four, takes a steam bath and gets a massage. "Then I listen to Earl's advice," Pucillo said. "He's a very wise man."
Pucillo said Jones has a remarkable command of the Scripture. But, flashing his crooked, gap-toothed grin, Jones also enjoys participating in the annual junk talk over local college basketball rivalries.
Which team is Jones' favorite? "You know," Pucillo said, "Earl's so smart, he's never told me."
More than a job
Jones walks to work five miles every morning from his home in Southeast Raleigh. Except for the several years he worked at a Y in Durham, he always has. Because he is legally blind, he cannot drive. He said he has walked through the heaviest humidity, gale force winds and the region's deepest snow.
Although he occasionally accepts a ride from his wife now that she's retired, he credits the walk with keeping him fit into his late 60s. He prides himself on keeping a brisk pace - at 67, he still knocks off the five miles in an hour and 10 minutes.
He hurries to the Y, he said, because he enjoys the work and the people. To him, being a masseur has been far more than a way to keep food on the table for his three kids. It has been more than a way to fulfill the demands of daily living, as they called it at the blind school.
"It's my job, but it's also my ministry," he said. "It's my gift from God."
