PAWLING – James Earl Jones may best be remembered in recent years for the voice of Darth Vader in the ‘Star Wars’ movies, “Field of Dreams,” or the king in Eddie Murphy’s ‘Coming to America.’ But he also starred in Shakespearean theater and on Broadway.
The famed actor of stage and film, died on Monday at age 93.
He was remembered by Dave Gamache, a former Dutchess County elections commissioner and county legislator who grew up in Pawling and knew the man.
“Yes, he was a celebrity, but he was the most genuine person you would ever want to meet. There was nothing phony about the man. He loved Pawling, he really loved Pawling, and he loved the people. He was active in the community,” Gamache said.
He said while Jones was at the top of his profession, he was “just as nice and wonderful and kind person as he was as a person at the top of his profession.”
Gamache has several memories of Jones.
“That booming voice, that worldclass voice – that was his voice,” he said, recounted a story when Jones walked into Gamache’s family liquor store. He said hello, and a young couple looking at the wine heard the voice, looked at one another and when they realized who it was, “their heads started going up and down like they were bobblehead dolls.”
Jones invited Gamache to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown with him as he was to speak there.
“We went into this room the size of a warehouse and all it is baseball bats, and we had to put the gloves on and the president of the hall of fame takes out a bat used by Babe Ruth and hands it to James and James hands it to me,” Gamache recounted. I’m like a little kid; it’s lovely.” At the end of the day, they drove back to Pawling to take Jones home. Gamache thanked him profusely for the day and “James says, ‘you know what the best part of the day was? Seeing how much you enjoyed it’.”
Gamache said Jones was a down-to-earth, humble man.
“He made you feel important. What a great man. It’s a sad, sad, sad day,” Gamache said.
Throughout his career, Jones received three Tony Awards, two Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1985 and was honored with the National Medal of Arts in 1992, the Kennedy Center Honor in 2002, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 2009 and the Honorary Academy Award in 2011.
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