Hemet couple celebrate 65th anniversary – Press Enterprise

The Rev. Gordon A. and Katharine “Kae” Jones of Hemet celebrated their 65th anniversary Aug. 23 at a luncheon with family and friends at Abby’s Cafe in Hemet.

Kae Vossler, who grew up in New York state, and Gordon Anning Jones, from Upper Darby, Pa., met in 1957, at the beginning of their senior year at Houghton College (now Houghton University), a private Christian college in Houghton, N.Y. Gordon was preaching at a revival meeting, and Kae was on the support team.

“Our first date, we went to an evening church service and she totally ignored me,” Gordon wrote in an email.

“When the pastor began his sermon, she started feverishly taking notes. I never saw anyone do that before and went back to my room on campus and told my roommate I met the girl I was going to marry. I knew what I was looking for in a wife and she was it,” he wrote.

“So two months later I said, ‘Wilt thou?’ and she wilted.”

They were married Aug. 23, 1958, at the First Methodist Church in Wellsville, N.Y.

Early in his career, Gordon was pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in San Bernardino and in 1973 he became pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Redlands. In those years, Kae also directed a refugee ministry in Santa Ana.

After Gordon completed a doctorate in 1984, he and Kae responded to a call from a small church group in Hawaii and spent the next 16 years with that interdenominational church, receiving mission support from several churches.

When they retired in June 2000, they moved to Hemet.

Four years later, they accepted a short-term mission assignment in China, where they both taught English at Sias University in Zhengzhou. That assignment was cut short when Gordon became ill and they returned to Hemet, but he recovered and has done supply preaching in Hemet and written a few books.

Gordon and Kae have three children, Virginia Harris of Hemet, Kristin Milstead of Seattle and Gordon Jones Jr. of Portland, Ore. They also have six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.