Linda Jones served in the American Red Cross in Korea in 1968-1969 and in Saudi Arabia during Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Linda Ruth Johnson Jones was born in 1944 in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she also grew up. Upon graduating from high school in 1962, she spent her first year of college at St. Andrews Presbyterian College in Laurinburg, North Carolina before transferring to UNC Greensboro, graduating in 1966 with a bachelor's degree in elementary education. Jones then worked as a teacher at a Dependents School at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina for a year before entering the American Red Cross in September of 1968. She attended a brief training in Washington D.C. before going to Camp Pelham in Korea, where she stayed until January before going to Camp Red Cloud in Uijeongbu, where she remained until returning to the United States in September of 1969. At that time, Jones taught in Atlanta, Georgia for six months before returning to the Red Cross. Upon re-entering the Red Cross, Jones was assigned to the Naval Regional Medical Center in Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina as an assistant station manager and then recreation supervisor, from 1970 to 1974. She was then assigned to Naval Regional Medical Center in Millington, Tennessee from 1974 to 1977. Next, Jones went to Royal Air Force Station Alconbury in England, from 1977, and upon returning to the States, to Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina as a station manager, where she met her husband. Both of them then went to Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina in February of 1981. From her assignment at Fort Bragg, Jones deployed to Saudi Arabia with the 82nd Airborne as part of Operation Desert Storm. She also deployed to Tuzla, Bosnia for four months in 1998, after training at Fort Benning and in Grafenwoehr, Germany. Jones then received orders to return to England, and chose instead to retire in 1999. After a year, she re-entered the American Red Cross as part of the reserve corps in 2000, taking various short-term assignments Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryand, and Womack Army Medical Center at Fort Bragg. She retired from the reserve corps in 2004.
