Summer car crash kills Pitt student

Power tools – especially those that could speed up his many building and repair jobs. Cold… Power tools – especially those that could speed up his many building and repair jobs. Cold pizza for breakfast in Venice. Wandering alone through the streets of European cities. Building computers from scratch for his friends, for free. Sailing, skiing and cycling. Designing a machine to clear away unstable housing developments in an environmentally-friendly way.

Though Christian Bryan Jones did not dedicate his life solely to any of the things in that list, they are the things that his family remembers about him. Known to his family and friends as Chris, the Pitt engineering student died in a car accident just after midnight on Thursday, Aug. 7. He was driving home from visiting friends at a camp outside Philadelphia, and wrecked when he swerved after almost falling asleep at the wheel, according to his friend, Brian White, who was not in the car.

Another friend, who was riding in the passenger seat, survived the accident.

At age 7, Chris learned to field-strip and clean military weapons – skills he picked up from soldiers returning from the first Gulf War while he was traveling to Europe on a military aircraft.Through his father’s military service, Chris’s family traveled overseas about once a year. Over the past 15 years, Chris and his older sister, Carrie, clocked more hours in military aircraft than many people in the military, according to their father, Captain G. Bryan Jones.

During his travels, Chris took pride in learning about the transportation systems of the cities he visited. He continued to feed his interest in getting around cities after he came to Pitt.

“He readily took advantage of the transit pass available to Pitt students and seemed to have learned more about Pittsburgh and Allegheny County than many folks who had lived their whole lives there,” Jones wrote, recalling memories of his son.

Even at home in Philadelphia, Chris found places to explore.

During lunch and after class in high school, Chris and his friend, White, would often venture through crawlspaces and pipes leading to the service basement beneath the school. When caught one day, school officials accused the two of trying to plant bombs beneath the school, White said.

They were actually exploring and taking photos, he explained.

Before learning to care for weapons from returning servicemen, Chris learned to read and write from his sister before he started school. Chris, 19, had a close relationship with his 22-year-old sister, who was one of the most important people in his life, according to his father.

Chris and his father also spent a good deal of time learning together, working on building projects and performing home repairs.

“He also became so much more skilled than I was, in almost everything he undertook, that I often became the overeducated helper,” Jones wrote, describing his most recently completed project with Chris – the reconstruction of the Victorian front porch on their home outside Philadelphia.

When not investing his time in a building project or passing hours at the Philadelphia Naval Base, where he worked this summer, with the Naval Sea Systems Command, Chris spent time with friends in his third-floor bedroom, watching movies and enjoying “general good times,” Jones wrote.

“He valued these friendships above most other things in his life,” Jones added. “He would do anything for his friends, and do it gladly.”

White described Chris’s dedication to friends, explaining that he was always interested in other people and spent most of his free time at friends’ houses.

Chris was well-liked, but “people didn’t like him because what he did was popular,” White said, describing his friend’s affinity for orange clothing and thrift-store shopping. “He made connections wherever he went; he just had friends everywhere.”

“Chris was always doing crazy things,” White said, adding that Chris had been planning to build a fireproof suit, so he could light himself on fire and jump into a pool at an end-of-summer party.

“He lived to build things. What I know about carpentry, I learned from him,” said White, who got to know Chris in high school, when the two spent hours in a crawlspace under a stage, building theatre sets.

Religion was also important to Chris, who was very active in his youth group at church. He made three mission trips to North Carolina and West Virginia, where he repaired houses for poor and disabled people. He was planning another trip for 2004.