Playwright, commentator, narrative medicine practitioner Syl Jones dies at 72

Sylvester “Syl” Jones, Jr. — a Minnesota writer, playwright, corporate communications consultant and former MPR News contributor — has died. 

Jones is remembered as an unflinching storyteller whose work often touched on subjects that people didn’t like to talk about. He often took a provocative look at a wide range of issues including gun violence, the origin of “Minnesota Nice” and the legacy of Harper Lee’s classic tale, To Kill a Mockingbird.

“We tell our children not to push, shove or yell. Yet as a nation, when it pleases us to push, shove or bomb other nations, we do it. We tell our children to use their words carefully, and we punish them if they don’t. But when they turn on the news, they see adults shouting each other down in public forums,” Jones wrote in 2009 after protests broke out at town halls around the country over health care reforms.

As a columnist, he was an unsparing critic of race relations.

“His presence on this publication’s opinion pages was a challenge — to editors, to readers, to Minnesota, to the establishment and to the human conscience most of all,” writes former Minnesota Star Tribune commentary editor Eric Ringham. He said Jones contributed to the Star Tribune for more than two decades.

Jones was 72 when he died on Nov. 10, according to daughter Dresden Jones. She said Jones moved into a St. Louis Park nursing home after a stroke in 2020 and went into hospice earlier this year.

Jones felt impact of trauma at early age

According to his daughter, Jones was born on Dec. 28, 1951 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The eldest of six children, he grew up in poverty and a time of tense race relations.

She said his focus on historical and ongoing trauma of Black communities was rooted in his experiences growing up, both as a young Black man in that environment and victim of sexual assault at age 8. He recalls that childhood in his book “Rescuing Little Roundhead.”

“He was a deeply traumatized person who tried so hard to do something good with his life,” said his daughter. “He very much understood trauma. He very much understood how that impacted a person's life. And…I watched him struggle for years, trying to not let that overcome him.”

She describes him as a prescient, confident, and funny man who liked to ruffle people’s feathers.

He was a devout member of the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Minnetonka. Jones’ passions included travel, baseball, spending time with family and Monopoly. “He was like a cutthroat, take-no-prisoners Monopoly player. We never won when we played with him,” said Dresden Jones with a laugh.

An accomplished playwright

His many plays include a take on Minnesota Twins legend Kirby Puckett as a tragic Greek character. The play was produced by the Minnesota History Theater in 2007. 

"The iconography of Kirby Puckett was larger than life," Jones said to MPR News. "In the play we look at what that was about. We look at Kirby as a person and what it was like to be a human being trying to bear that weight."

His works have come to life at Twin Cities theaters like Mixed Blood, the Guthrie and Penumbra — and beyond. Jones’ play “Black No More” won the Kennedy Center Award for Best New Play in 1998. His work “Daughters of Africa,” exploring the trials and triumphs of African African women, is still touring middle and high schools across the region, according to his daughter.

Jones was also a frequent guest and contributor to MPR News.

In 1994, Jones produced a commentary on the issuance of a postage stamp which commemorated Black troops known as Buffalo Soldiers who fought and killed Native Americans.

“The controversy over the issuance of the new Buffalo Soldier stamp by the postal service is particularly poignant to me because it is the nexus of a great tragedy involving all of my ancestors,” he said, referring to both his Native American and African American ancestry. 

Using stories to help heal

Later in life, Jones’ interest in historical trauma led him to an emerging field known as narrative medicine, which incorporates storytelling to help doctors treat the entirety of their patients, not just their symptoms. He used a Bush Fellowship in 2014 to pursue graduate studies at Columbia University in New York, and was a pioneer of the practice in Minnesota. He instructed physicians and other healthcare professionals in narrative medicine as a leader at Hennepin Healthcare.

A memorial service has yet to be scheduled.

Jones is survived by his four children, four grandchildren, and other relatives.

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