Sheinelle Jones returns to Wichita, touting her new book but missing her grandma

Next weekend will mark a couple of firsts for Sheinelle Jones, a former Wichitan and co-anchor of NBC’s “Today with Jenna & Sheinelle.”

The tour for her first book, “Through Mom’s Eyes: Simple Wisdom from Mothers Who Raised Extraordinary Humans,” will stop at Grace Presbyterian Church on Saturday, presented by Watermark Books.

But it’s also the first time she’ll be back home and not be able to see her grandmother Josephine Vonceal Pace Brown, who died in January at age 96.

“When I left (for Northwestern University in 1996), I was like ‘Every time I go home, I’m going to Taco Tico to get a deluxe sancho, I’m going to stop by Spangles.’ But my grandmother would love to cook for me,” she recalled. “For 20 years, I would come home and I would feel guilty if I ate anywhere but my grandmother’s kitchen.”

She’s still craving her grandma’s salmon croquettes, homemade bleu cheese dressing and cinnamon rolls.

“I haven’t been back without her being in the kitchen and cooking for me, so it’s going to be a new experience for me,” Jones said in a phone interview with the Eagle from Puerto Rico, where she was spending spring break with her three children.

Highs and lows

The release of the book, scheduled for April 14 — comes after a year of the highest highs and lowest lows for Jones. Besides the loss of her grandmother, her husband, Uche Ojeh, died May 23 of glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, and Jones took a leave of absence from her “Today” duties to be with him.

Jones said she was about halfway through the book, which had been scheduled to be released a year ago, when Ojeh received his diagnosis.

“I said, forget this, I’m putting this down” she recalled of her book. “And after his brain surgery, one of the first things he said when he opened his eyes was ‘Where’s your laptop?’

“And I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I don’t care about my laptop.’

“He said, please – he wanted me to keep moving forward,” Jones said.

“A large part of it was for me because he knew it was my dream, but for him and the kids it showed we were still moving forward. The diagnosis was a hit, but we didn’t believe he was going to die. I really didn’t,” Jones said. “I forged ahead, and when he was doing chemo or at his hospital visits, I would sit next to him with my laptop, and he would look over at me and know I was still moving forward.

“When he got towards the end — I hadn’t mentioned it in the book because he didn’t want to talk about it, he was so private — I said this book was about motherhood and I wanted to say something (about him), but he said, ‘Please, I don’t want to be in it.’”

Mothers’ day

Jones, who joined NBC as a “Weekend Today” host in 2014, said “Through Mom’s Eyes” started as a digital element pre-COVID — “no one paid any attention to (digital) at the time” — of the “Today” show website, and eventually was made part of the daily broadcast.

She watched the interactions that celebrity guests such as actors, musicians and athletes, would have with the anchors and crew.

“While everybody was focused on celebrities, as they should, I kept staring at the nice ones thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, what did their mother feed them?’,” she said. “(NBA star) Steph Curry would come in and he was so kind to everyone and speak to everyone, and made everybody felt seen. I thought, ‘What a kind person. I would love to talk to his mom and hear about her journey.’

“As soon as Steph Curry’s mom, Sonya, said yes, the floodgates opened and I think they realized my intention was nothing but pure, and I wanted to hear the wisdom and challenges and things they did right and things they’d do differently,” Jones said.

Sonya Curry put her in touch with Shaquille O’Neal’s mom, Lucille, then Kevin Durant’s mom. Interviews kept flowing in, with the mothers of performers including Lady Gaga, Matthew McConaughy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Rhett, Carrie Underwood and the Jonas Brothers.

“I was overwhelmed by the number of women who were so happy to sit down and share,” she said.

The anecdotes, experiences and advice that she got from her fellow mothers served as a north star for Jones.

“It goes to show something that we all know anyway: that there’s no one right way,” she said. “But what started out as what I thought would be a simple guide to talk about chores and sibling rivalry and divorce, illness, it turned out to be so much more.”

Inspired by books such as “The Purpose-Driven Life,” Jones’ next mission was to see if “Through Mom’s Eyes” would make it into print.

“What if I put it into a book, like ‘Chicken Soup (for the Soul)’, where you could just read a chapter or read it all, and when you put it down you feel better?” she said. “I recognize a lot of women, especially in the thick of it, don’t have time to read too much, but it could be a beautiful book by their bedside that they could either have or give to someone. I would love to put it out into the world.”

Going back over her recordings and reading advice from other mothers helped her during the low points of grief, she said.

“Ultimately, I’ve learned that when life gets hard, whether it’s an illness or a divorce or whatever it is, motherhood doesn’t stop. If anything, motherhood gets turned up,” Jones said. “As I wrote this book where he was sick, I found myself writing and it was like the women were speaking to me all over again in ways I didn’t hear the first time.”

She was especially inspired by Oracene Price, the mother of tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams, who lost another adult daughter.

“This woman’s a tough cookie, I can be a tough cookie too. Literally, I felt that as I typed it,” she said. “The book started to take on a depth as my life changed.”

Going on tour

When she first envisioned the publicity for “Through Mom’s Eyes,” Jones pictured herself going out on book tours with her mother, Sheila Kinnard, and grandmother.

“I had it all planned out,” she said.

Kinnard was a longtime drama educator at Mayberry Cultural and Fine Arts Magnet Middle School and is still active in theater and arts in Wichita.

“My mom and I are super close, and she was close to my grandmother,” Jones said. “Anybody in Wichita would tell you, they dressed alike, they went to Music Theatre (Wichita), started a choir in Wichita. We both have my grandmother on a pedestal.”

Jones said her grandmother supported her choice of an occupation from the day a young Sheinelle came home from career day at Gammon Elementary School and said she wanted to be a news reporter.

Jo Brown made news herself, as the first Black school board member at USD 259. Her grandfather, Dr. Val Brown, was a physician with his brother, Jones said, and were doctors to most of the Black population in Wichita.

Jones recalled that while at a student at Brooks Middle School, she volunteered to go to an “easier English class.”

“My grandmother found out,” Jones said. “The next day, she was like, ‘No, no, no – we don’t volunteer to do things that are easier.’ She put me right back into Honors English, and I was learning all about ‘Beowulf’ and Shakespeare.

“Her advocacy changed the trajectory of my education and writing and, hello, I ended up writing a book,” she added. “This is certainly a love letter to the journey.”

Jones’ book tour covers eight cities in seven days, April 13-20. At most of the cities, she will be interviewed by a local personality. At Grace Presbyterian in Wichita, the interviewer will be Carla Eckels from KMUW radio.

It takes a village

Jones said she hopes the book spotlights not only biological birth mothers, but everyone that has a part in raising a child.

For her, that was Jo Brown, who she remembers riding along with and listening to either classical music or Lou Rawls on the car radio.

“She gave me the gift of time,” Jones said. “Sometimes we worry as mothers that we can’t be there around the clock — I certainly can’t be there around the clock with my three kids — but there are so many other people in the village who pour into your kids just the same.

“It goes to show how much that matters,” she said. “It’s not just moms who pour into us. It’s the grandmothers, it’s the aunts, it’s the teachers, the coaches. It’s the village.”

Jones says she’s always loved children. As a youth, she decorated the walls of her bedroom with pictures of cute kids, despite the teasing of her family and friends. Her first job was in child care at the racquet club on Rock Road (now Genesis Health Clubs), where she got countless offers as a babysitter and a nanny.

“I want to do it right,” she said. “The same way that someone studies literature, or the same way someone studies science. I’m fascinated by the art of motherhood. And there are so many proxies who are like mothers to people. I want to be a scholar at motherhood.”

Jones, who turns 48 the day after her Wichita book tour stop, said she hopes her book can shine a light on mothers.

“My prayer, my hope is that this book can be one of those books where people use it to talk about motherhood and how we parent and being present with our kids and taking care of ourselves,” she said. “If I can pour into women and I can pour into families, then I can help kids.”

SHEINELLE JONES: ‘THROUGH MOM’S EYES’

When: 5 p.m. Saturday, April 18

Where: Grace Presbyterian Church, 5002 E. Douglas

Tickets: $32, including a copy of the book, from watermarkbooks.com