Darnella Jones liked fun as much as the next person.

She liked to gamble in casinos, play bid whist and take dance lessons at the senior center, and drive around in her pearl white Cadillac, her small frame perched behind the wheel under one of her ever-present hats.

NICK ARROYO/narroyo@ajc.com / 1999 photo (ENLARGE)

Darnella Jones dances with Mayor Bill Campbell in May 1999.

But Mrs. Jones couldn't sit idly by when something needed to be done.

"Some people just have that in them, a love of people and a need to serve," said her daughter, state Rep. Sheila Jones of Atlanta. "That was just a major part of her."

"She didn't go to the senior center looking to do volunteer work," her daughter said. "She went there to play cards. But when she got there, she saw they needed people to help and saw she could assist them with her talents in the kitchen."

The funeral for Darnella Shell Jones is 11 a.m. today at Antioch Baptist Church North. Mrs. Jones, 80, of Atlanta died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease July 19 at Crawford Long Hospital. Willie Watkins Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

After she retired, Mrs. Jones could have been forgiven if she never wanted to go near a kitchen again. For 35 years, the Atlanta native worked as a dietitian in the Atlanta public school system. She'd show up at the cafeteria at 7 in the morning, help cook for and then serve hundreds of elementary-school children, then clean up and prepare for the next day.

She took on other jobs after she retired — working at Kmart, driving a school bus and caring for children — but cooking kept coming back into her life.

During the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, she prepared food at different venues and got a lot of mileage out of teasing her late husband, the Rev. Joseph Jones Sr., as he cooked under her supervision.

At church, she volunteered for the "culinary ministry" and cooked for every event. She even took sandwiches to striking Lockheed workers when her husband worked there.

After everyone was fed, she was ready to talk politics.

Mrs. Jones served as a poll worker for decades, became a block captain in her neighborhood and helped spearhead the Harwell Heights Community Club in Collier Heights.

"She was a very vocal person in our meetings and the NPU-I [a neighborhood planning unit] meetings," said her friend Mable Reid of Atlanta, "because she wanted the community to be the best it could be."

"I'm truly going to miss her because she was one of those people who would give you all she had in trying to help you."

Of all her causes, nothing excited Mrs. Jones more than her daughter's campaigns.

It wasn't enough for her to get on the phone and solicit votes from everyone she knew. She would carry a campaign sign to choir practice to remind the singers to vote for her daughter.

She became such a fixture at her daughter's side that if Rep. Jones showed up at a public event without her, people would ask where her mother was.

Mrs. Jones was too ill to help much with her daughter's recent re-election campaign, but she followed every step. She died four days after her daughter's July 15 victory.

"I wouldn't be where I am if not for her," her daughter said. "I told her, 'I think some of these people voted for me because of you.' "

Other survivors include five sons, Joseph Jones Jr., Johnny Lee Jones, Larry R. Jones Sr., Kenneth Earl Jones and Michael Jerome Jones, all of Atlanta; another daughter, the Rev. Sandra Jewell Williams, of Kankakee, Ill.; 19 grandchildren and 15 great-grandchildren.