CHEYENNE - Asked what he disliked the most, Dick Jones would answer,"dishonesty."

His heroes were his father, Herbert Hoover, Winston Churchill and Ronald Reagan, according to his family.

The successful Powell businessman and powerful legislator died August 20 in the Powell hospital following surgery. He was 97.

A Republican, Jones served in the Legislature for nearly 20 years and went through all the leadership chairs. He was a longtime chairman of the Ways and Means committee, now the appropriations committee.

He ran for governor in 1974 but lost the general election to Democrat Ed Herschler.

"Dick was the most influential legislator I ever served with," said Tom Stroock of Casper, a former state senator and ambassador to Guatemala.

Jones, he said, would jot down the bills he favored on a yellow legal pad.

"If a bill was on his yellow pad, it probably would pass and if not it probably wouldn't," he said.

Jones took John Patton, of Sheridan, and Stroock, then both freshmen, under his wing, Stroock said.

"He was imperial and aloof but he was kind and concerned and extremely effective," Stroock said. "He had that great stone face and that way of carrying himself."

Retired district judge Harry Leimback of Casper was a Democratic state senator who served with Jones.

"He was one of the most respected legislators there at the time I was there," Leimback said. "I was a Democrat and he was a Republican but he was the one Republican that I respected and really paid attention to when he talked."

Another Casper Democrat who spoke well of Jones was Dick Sedar.

Jones and Dick Tobin looked after him when he was first elected to the Senate, he said.

"A lot of guys didn't like him because he was hard and tough but when you got to know him he was a kind soul," Sedar said. "He was an icon if there ever was one. You could go to him with a problem and discuss it with him and it didn't matter which party you were."

Patton said Jones invited him to dinner one night. He expected a discussion of priority bills in the education committee. But Jones was concerned about his workload, his welfare, instead.

Later, Jones initially balked at co-sponsoring a bill to allocate $1 million to centralize the state computer system.

He thought Patton was being too liberal, or progressive.

He eventually signed the bill and spoke in favor of it.

"We were the first state west of the Mississippi to completely computerize the legislative process and Dick was a real contributor to that. It was a leap in time for us," Patton said.

Jones was the third child of six children born to Alfred and Elsa Jones, who emigrated from Sweden and homesteaded on the Huntley Project east of Billings, Mont., in 1907.

Jones grew up on the family homestead and graduated from Huntley Project High School in 1928.

As a young man, he worked for the railroad and delivered milk in Billings and later started his first trucking company with a partner in Casper.

In 1932, he married his high school sweetheart, Estes "Jackie" Clarke. They had three children - Nancy, Alan and Tom.

Estes died in 1984. He married Evelyn Nelson in 1987.

In 1935, he purchased a one-truck freight company in Powell and established a trucking company that continues to operate today as Dick Jones Trucking. He was active in the business at its Cody location until he returned to Powell in 2001.

He served on the Powell town council for four years and as mayor for four years. He also was a board member of Northwest College at Powell.

One of his favorite forms of recreation was a Sunday afternoon drive to look at the crops, family members said.

Jones was very proud of his Swedish ancestry. He visited Sweden on several occasions and formed close ties with relatives.

"You can always tell a Swede, but you can't tell him much," Jones would say.

Contact Joan Barron at (307) 632-1244 joan.barron@trib.com