Clarence "Buddy" Jones

Inducted 2026

Clarence Walter (Buddy) Jones, Fountain City. Born in Collirene, Alabama in 1902, Buddy Jones began ATA shooting in 1940 in Knox County, Tennessee as a professional for Remington Arms Company. As a major in the Army Air Corps, he was a gunnery instructor stationed in Florida, shooting ATA targets from 1943-45. After the war he returned to Fountain City in Knox County. He won sixteen Tennessee state championships between 1946 and 1954. He won the singles in 1946, 47, 48 and 49; the handicap in 1948; the doubles in 1947, 48, 49, 50 and 54; and the all-around in 1946, 47, 48, 49, 50 and 54. In 1948 he ran unsuccessfully for a two-year term as sheriff of Knox County. From 1949 to 1950, he was warden of the former Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee. In 1950 he ran again for sheriff and was victorious, but having failed to solve a 1951 murder in Fountain City, he was defeated in the 1952 election. After wintering in Clearwater, Florida in early 1954, he came back for his last Tennessee state shoot in Memphis that summer, shot in Tennessee in 1955, and then moved to Tampa. Jones was Florida doubles champ in 1956 and 1960, and in 1958 he became the first Florida singles champ with 200. He won the HAA in 1958 and 1964 and the HOA in 1958. He was a Florida Hall of Fame inductee. His last shooting was in 1969. He later moved to Miami, where he died in 1982 at the age of 80. His son, Charles Thomas Jones, died in 2015.