James Earl Jones never intended to live in Pawling, N.Y. — where he had a house for 50 years and died this week.
The Arkabutla, Miss. native resided in the town for more than 50 years, having purchased a property there in the 1970s after a fateful visit with a friend.
According to a 2012 profile published by the Poughkeepsie Journal, Jones first passed through when a friend from New Jersey who was looking for a new, larger home invited him on a road trip Upstate to house hunt.
The friend ended up not buying the land he was looking at, but Jones did.
“I liked it,” Jones told the outlet at the time, praising its “Big trees … they were big enough to hug.”
He put down roots of his own in the area and would keep a home there for the next 50 years until his death. (He also owned a home in Los Angeles, according to the New York Times.) Over that time, he raised his son, Flynn, in Pawling, and began purchasing adjoining properties to his original plot, according Realtor.com, eventually amassing 10 lots.
According to records obtained by the site, some of Jones’s reported purchases include a property sold for $16,500 in 1993; two in 1994, for $108,000 and $177,500; and another for $320,000 in 2000.hhh
The Appalachian Trail boardwalk in Pawling, N.Y.
Getty
But the star wasn’t just investing in real estate. He also gave back to the small community of just under 2,000 residents.
The Journal notes that he was involved in fundraising for his son’s alma mater, Poughkeepsie Day School, and took part in the Young Playwrights Festival at Bardavon 1869 Opera House.
A former Dutchess County official who knew Jones, remembered his neighbor kindly in an obituary published by midhudsonnews.com.
“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,” Pawling native Dave Gamache told the outlet. “He loved Pawling, he really loved Pawling, and he loved the people. He was active in the community.”
Despite his star status, Gamache adds, he was “just as nice and wonderful and kind a person as he was as a person at the top of his profession.”
Jones is best known for portraying Darth Vader in the Star Wars films and Mufasa in The Lion King. In recent years, he starred in productions of On Golden Pond, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and Much Ado About Nothing, which costarred Vanessa Redgrave. In 2012, Jones earned his fourth Tony nomination for The Best Man.
Through his decades-long career, he never lost his passion for storytelling.
“I’d like to play anything that gives me a chance to learn about people who are truly different from me,” he once told PEOPLE. “I want to say as much as possible about how I feel about myself — not my Black self or my American self, but my real self.”
