A new scholarship will honor the legacy of Wisconsin's great armed forces correspondent

We miss Meg Jones, our all-Wisconsin reporter, every day.

Who could best cover the warmest autumn in state history? The latest chapter of the University of Wisconsin Marching Band? The stories of Wisconsin troops leaving Afghanistan and of Afghan refugees arriving at Fort McCoy?

Who could write them the way Meg described that very moment when “Jump Around” became a Badgers thing?

Homecoming. Oct. 10, 1998. Night game at Camp Randall Stadium.

A Drew Brees-led Purdue team is driving toward the end zone when the quarter ends and the teams switch direction.

As the Boilermakers prepare to move the football toward the north end zone and the University of Wisconsin-Madison student section, the wailing of trumpets playing three F sharps followed by a B note blares from the loudspeakers.

And suddenly the student section looks like red and white kernels of popcorn popping during an earthquake.

"She was a George Webb's waitress, was on the crew team in Madison and was in the UW marching band,” said longtime Journal Sentinel colleague Meg Kissinger. “Everything you think about Wisconsin was Meg."

Meg hunted deer with her dad. Worked as a vendor at County Stadium. Served as a volunteer at multiple Olympic Games. Traveled the world, with her mom, Carole, and her Uncle Jack, riding the rails, surfing, diving, kayaking, in Africa, Russia, South America, Australia, the Middle East. ... Born a Rhinelander Hodag, she grew up in Whitewater and reported in Marinette, Shawano and Wausau before joining the Milwaukee Sentinel as a state reporter in 1993. We worked together for 27 years.

She was a caring friend and colleague, who looked after those who were ailing, took interns and young reporters under her wing, and conspired with experienced journalists as they assigned themselves to the best stories they could find.

Even greater than Meg’s knowledge and regard for all things Wisconsin was her respect and gratitude for the troops willing to sacrifice everything for us. And her empathy and concern for the loved ones of those who made that sacrifice.

Thursday is Veterans Day, one of those days we miss Meg most. Meg’s late father John was a Navy World War II vet, and on each of the major military holidays she would remember soldiers, pilots, sailors, Marines, Guardsmen and Reservists whom she had met and whom we had lost.

It might be a soldier from Lena, still in her teens:

The grass has grown green around Nichole Frye's black granite grave marker. The soft music of wind chimes drifts through the tiny cemetery, next to a cornfield not yet plowed.

On the cold February day she was buried in 2004, plywood was laid across the muddy, snowy ground for her family, friends and neighbors to stand on. They listened to taps sounded by two Lena High School trumpeters and watched a soldier present the 19-year-old woman's parents with her Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Frye had been killed while driving a vehicle hit by an improvised explosive device in Baqouba, Iraq.

Before the burial, hundreds packed the high school gym for her funeral service. School buses lined up to ferry mourners one mile down the road to the cemetery that would become her final resting place. Bus drivers left their vehicles to come inside and pay their respects, gray-haired men in matching bus company jackets, some wiping away tears. Her high school band played at the service; one empty chair was draped with a band uniform, with a flute lying on top.

Two years earlier, Nichole Frye had been sitting in the flute section.

It might be a father of four from Neillsville:

When the first Wisconsin National Guard combat arms unit was deployed overseas since World War II, I wrote about the impact on a small town when its guard unit is mobilized. I picked Neillsville, a community of 2,700 in central Wisconsin, which turned out to say goodbye to Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry on Father's Day 2004.

I stopped at Neillsville's armory to talk to soldiers getting ready for deployment and met Todd Olson. The 35-year-old staff sergeant sat at a table doing paperwork. He became emotional as he talked about how much he would miss his wife and four children, and the farmers who were his customers at the local bank where he was a loan manager.

When the battalion finished its training, I went to Camp Shelby, Miss., to write about the unit and sought out Olson on a field filled with 4,000 soldiers assembled for a going-away ceremony. It was Veterans Day. Olson talked about how the day now had much more meaning for him because he was about to go to war. He joked with two buddies about how they were the oldest guys in the unit. They called themselves the "Old Farts Club."

Shortly after Christmas an editor told me another Wisconsin resident had been killed in Iraq. Could I write a story?

I looked at the name and sucked in my breath. It was Todd Olson.

Or she might tell the story of a young newlywed couple from Kenosha, the husband serving in the Marine Reserves:

Kristen Nelson sits cross-legged on the carpet in the living room of her Kenosha apartment.

Spread around her are three packages of Fruit of the Loom colored briefs, two packs of white tube socks, two bottles of athlete’s foot powder, Rice Krispies treats, fruit snacks, strawberry Pop-Tarts, teeth-whitening strips, deodorant, a Leatherman-style multipurpose tool, a Hello Kitty valentine from Kristen’s niece, a video of her 20th birthday celebration the previous week.

A plastic container holds chocolate-chip cookies and bread slices to keep them moist. The cookies are still warm from the oven.

In a note on lined paper, Kristen tells her 23-year-old husband, Ricky, that the foot powder is from her dad, that she misses him and loves him. XOXOXO.

Next to Kristen is a life-size cardboard poster of Ricky. On the walls are their wedding photos, Kristen in a white dress, Ricky in his Marine dress blues. On the patio door are Valentine’s decorations and a banner with a blue star, signifying a family member serving in the military overseas.

It’s Friday evening, Feb. 22, and Kristen Nelson is preparing a care package, a box of love that will travel from a Kenosha post office to Camp Habbaniyah, Iraq.

The box will finish the 7,000-mile trip stacked in the entryway of a former Iraqi air base barracks at Camp Habbaniyah, home to members of Milwaukee-based Marine Reserve Fox Company.

Snapshots of Kristen are pasted on the white stucco wall of Ricky Nelson’s room there. He’ll bite into the cookies and tell Kristen they’re better than the ones he makes. He’ll wear the socks and hand out the treats to his fellow Marines, and he’ll watch the video from Kristen’s birthday.

He’ll send home the letter she sent in the box, along with her other letters, for safekeeping. His package will arrive on April 14, and Kristen will open it shortly before five Marines knock on her door and tell her Ricky was killed that day by an improvised explosive device.

The wooden box carrying Ricky’s remains is flown to Kenosha on April 22, one day after the couple’s first anniversary.

We lost Meg 11 months ago, at age 58, just weeks after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Next week, Meg will be installed into the Wisconsin News Association Hall of Fame. An exhibit this month at the War Memorial Center, "I Am Not Invisible," features two dozen biographies of area female veterans written by Meg. This week, current and former Journal Sentinel staffers are launching a scholarship fund for UW-Madison students in her honor.

Many of you reached out with kind words after Meg died, saying how much you appreciated her work. For those who would like to contribute, tax-deductible donations may be made online at megjonesfund.org/donate and by mail to the Meg Jones Scholarship Fund, Milwaukee Press Club Endowment Ltd, 1505 N. 119th St., Wauwatosa, WI 53226.

Two years ago, on the last Veterans Day before the COVID-19 pandemic, a veterans group asked Meg Jones, who had made eight trips overseas to Iraq and Afghanistan to report on our troops, if she would speak at the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center. “The names of our dead veterans are inscribed on walls and monuments across the country, just like the ones here at Milwaukee’s War Memorial,” Meg said. “But we know there’s a story behind each name. A life lived; a life cut short.”

That day Meg did what she did so well; she told five of those stories: About Pvt. Arthur Cornelius Ryan, of South Milwaukee, who died in an artillery line in France during World War I. About Roy Marin, of Bay View, who died in the last ship sunk by the Japanese, a submarine, during World War II. About Ralph Jackson, of Richland Center, who died in Korea during the battle of Chongchon. About Jim Van Bendegom, of Kenosha, who was killed in battle at age 19, just three weeks after arriving in Vietnam.

And about Nichole Frye, who was engaged to be married, whose favorite song was "Amazing Grace," who loved angels and named her kitten Angelica, and who had played flute in the Lena High School band.

Email Editor George Stanley at george.stanley@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @geostanley.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: This Veterans Day, we miss and honor all-Wisconsin reporter Meg Jones