JACKSONVILLE BEACH, Fla. - A bracelet found on Jacksonville Beach could be tied to a fallen soldier hundreds of miles away.
First Coast News first reported on the bracelet last week. The black bangle, found by Jacksonville resident John Porcella, appeared to be a military remembrance bracelet.
The bracelet simply read: “Josh Jones. Baghdad, Iraq. August 2013.”
Word spread through social media, and with the help of First Coast News viewers we got in touch with the widow of Corporal Joshua Jones, who was killed in Baghdad, Iraq in August 2006.
“Yes, I believe that it’s for my Josh, I do,” Tiffany Jones, who lives in Chester, Ohio, said of the bracelet. “He was a great soldier. Like, that’s one of the things that everybody said.”
The Jones’ romance was the definition of young love. Josh’s grandmother set them up and the two married when Tiffany was 19 and Josh was 21.
Tiffany gave birth to their first daughter, Cami, while Josh was in Army basic training.
Two years later, Josh deployed to Baghdad.
“I was so devastated,” Tiffany said. “I cried and I cried.”
That July, Tiffany found out she was expecting their second daughter. Josh wouldn’t live to meet little Sadie.
“That’s one of the hard parts about all this,” Tiffany said. “That he didn’t get to be here to meet her at all.”
Tiffany grew emotional when remembering August 27, 2006. She waited all day to chat online with Josh, but he never contacted her. She had just returned to her house when she saw a car in her driveway.
“[I heard] ‘Mrs. Jones? Are you Mrs. Jones?’ And I turned around, and I saw them,” Tiffany said, remembering the men in dress greens who delivered the news.
Nearly 12 years to the day after a sniper killed Cpl. Josh Jones in Baghdad, Tiffany’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. News of the bracelet had reached Chester, Ohio.
“My heart started racing and I was like 'Oh my gosh! This can’t be',” she said.
The bracelet found on Jacksonville Beach reads August 2013, and Josh Jones was killed in 2006, but Tiffany is convinced it’s for her husband.
“I honestly think that when they had the bracelets made, they might have had them made in 2013 and they got the dates mixed up,” she said.
First Coast News has been unable to find official record of a different Josh Jones who was killed in Baghdad in August, 2013.
But the bracelet isn’t hers; Tiffany still has her own remembrance bracelet. Both Tiffany and several members of Jones’ battalion told First Coast News someone who served with Jones used to live in Jacksonville. We are currently trying to follow that lead.
If we are unable to find the owner of the bracelet, John Porcella will mail it to Tiffany for her daughters to have.
Meanwhile, Tiffany is now engaged and has a third daughter with her fiancé. She doesn’t say she’s moved on, rather that she’s moving forward. Josh is still a huge part of their lives and his photos fill the family’s home.
Tiffany said this whole situation has reminded her that there are still good people in the world, and she’s grateful that Porcella wanted to return the bracelet and honor her husband. She also wanted to spread the word and encourage people to remember not only Josh, but all soldiers who have given their lives.
“He didn’t just die for me and his daughters and his family,” Tiffany said. “He died for you, and for everybody else, so I just want people to remember that.”