By Leo Adam Biga
Self-described “community culture specialist” Josh Jones of Omaha brings high energy and positivity as a facilitator, networker and emcee. He was already an athletic star and champion when a life-threatening heart ailment required open heart surgery. He battled back to become a beloved hometown hero only to face new heart issues that eventually forced him to give up his hoop dreams. He pays forward the saving grace, social capital and goodwill he accrued during those trying times to engage others in community.
He hosted the city’s downtown love fest for world boxing champion Terence “Bud” Crawford on September 27, 2025, with “Let It Fly” podcast co-host Mike’l Severe. It wasn’t the first time Jones hyped up crowds to show appreciation for Crawford. Jones has served a similar role for Creighton University men’s basketball home games at CHI, where he was a CU role player after a stellar Omaha Central career.
He brought the winner-take-all TBT college alumni professional basketball tournament to Omaha in 2023. While Salvation Army North Corps community center director he ran several different hoops leagues. He was part of efforts to revive the North 24th Street Bryant Center outdoor basketball courts, where he played as a youth. He plans to announce the launch of a major inner city sports initiative in March.
His activities extend to his Beats N Sheets Karaoke brand, hosting the Juneteenth Freedom Festival during Native Omaha Days, collaborating with the Omaha Black Police Officers Association, organizing community cleanups, et cetera.
Wherever individuals and organizations make community, he’s there. “I’m ultra extroverted. I thrive off people,” he said. Then there’s the Vessel Network, a company he co-founded that serves youth and adults who have developmental disabilities. It connects clients with residential providers and operates a day services program. He said he and his team have grown it to the point that CEO Jenny Grove, staff and partners do all the work and anymore he just “stops by to say hi, give a handshake or hug, and hang out.”
His call to serve that population came when a group from the Teammates mentoring program visited a Creighton basketball practice when he was a Bluejay player. He noticed a disabled mentee wasn’t getting much love.
“I’m an underdog from the inner city, so I gravitated to him naturally.” Jones said. “I didn’t want anyone to feel less than and I vowed if I could find an opportunity to do more I will. When the opportunity presented itself after I retired from basketball it became a passion project. A fellow former athlete, Klaye Rowe, co-founded Vessel Network with me.”
Jones balances all this around being a husband and father. He and wife Tanisha have two children.
In giving back to those in need Jones follows the good works modeled by his late parents John Jones Sr. and Desiree Jones. When Josh was young his father was often sick from heart ailments that eventually killed him. Josh admired how despite his dad coming from a poor, limited formal education Mississippi background and dealing with health problems he became a good provider, husband, father and citizen.
“He was always a community advocate. He’d drive down to ConAgra and fill up a 15-foot trailer with perishable food and pass it out for free to the community in those very areas where I walked and worked. He just did it on his own. He had a natural heart for the community. He’d deliver to schools, churches, the Salvation Army or pass it out to anybody and everybody on the street. He was just that type of person.”
As a child Josh sometimes joined him on those pickup and distribution runs. “I hated it because I was embarrassed. I thought I was too cool for school. But the older I got the more I recognized the actual value.”
The love and care demonstrated by his mother and other family matriarchs also shaped him.
“I come from a family and tradition of caretakers. When my great grandma needed a caretaker, my grandma took care of her. When my grandma needed care, my mom took care of her. And when my mom got sick with cancer, I took care of her. So, it’s always been organic in me. It’s just the right thing to do. I always try to put myself in the shoes of those going through adversity.
He has personal experience with adversity. He earned living legend status before ever suiting up to play for Creighton. As a youth he excelled on North Omaha courts and broke records at Omaha Central, helping lead the Eagles to two consecutive Class A state championships. But it was the “miraculous” recovery he made from open heart surgery, necessitated by bacterial endocarditis, that made news. In the same year he underwent that first surgery he returned to top the state in scoring, set Central’s all-time career points mark, and led his team to a third straight title.
His resilience and success over long odds made for a feel good, inspirational story. “The entire Omaha community rallied behind me,” he recalled, “because I was like hope for them.” At Central he was highly recruited by colleges. He pledged to Creighton. Once his heart problem occurred schools once coveting him backed off as there was no assurance his heart issues wouldn’t reoccur. Creighton stood by him. Then head coach Dana Altman, assistant Darian DeVries and athletic director Bruce Rasmussen visited him in the hospital to make a promise.
“They said sports didn’t so much build my character as reveal it. They guaranteed me I had a full ride even if I never played again. That changed my life. I guess you could say I was motivated by them to come back.”
He became the first in his family to attend college and CU stayed true to its word even after Altman left and Greg McDermott arrived as the new head coach. Jones was a teammate of McDermott’s three-time All-American and future NBA player-son Doug McDermott. Jones remained on scholarship even when more heart problems surfaced, another open-heart surgery that cut short his career.
“He was a very good player. One of the things that gets lost in his health problems is that he had an incredible high school career and played some pretty good basketball at Creighton as well.
Jones developed a special bond with Coach McDermott, saying, “He really took a liking to me and my family.”
“Yeah, we’re still close today,” McDermott said. “I think anytime you go through something like that with one of your players where you’re in the hospital with him the day before he has open heart surgery and the day that it’s finished, you develop a bond that’s a little bit different. It’s just like we finished our last conversation when we see each other again.”
McDermott is not surprised by the work Jones has gone on to do. “He always cared deeply about his community and wanted to be someone that gave back. He realized he was presented with an incredible opportunity at Creighton and to Josh’s credit he took advantage of that, and he hasn’t stopped giving back since his graduation.”
The coach admires how Jones took care of his mother and siblings. “The way he did everything he could to support his family was incredible to see.” Jones in turn is forever grateful that when his mother got sick and died McDermott and others arranged to pay for her funeral. He considers McDermott, DeVries, Rasmussen and Bluejay backers as family.
McDermott said the positivity the gregarious Jones brought as a student-athlete continues. “Josh is a wonderful young man. He wears his passion on his sleeve – always a big smile on his face. Josh always brightens up the room when he shows up. He brings that energy and wonderful smile that just makes everybody’s day better.”
Jones is grateful to everyone who’s been there for him and his family.
“Other mentors have taken a personal liking to me along my journey.” That includes a pair of strong Black men from North O in Thomas Warren and Tim Clark. Jones is aware of the shoulders he stands on. During his rise as an athlete he got educated about the Omaha Black sports greats who preceded him: Marion Hudson, Bob Boozer, Bob Gibson, Gale and Roger Sayers, Fred Hare, Ron Boone, Marlin Briscoe, Joe Orduna, Phil Wise, Johnny Rodgers, John C. Johnson, Kerry Trotter, Mike McGee, Maurtice Ivy, Jessica Haynes, Larry Station, Keith Jones, Ron Kellogg, Cedric Hunter, Calvin Jones, Ahman Green, Terence Crawford.
“Growing up I had those stories in mind of the great people who came out of North Omaha. I knew who came before me.”
And he respects the greats who’ve come after, including Chucky Hepburn, Hunter Sallis, John Tonje and Xavier Watts.
“People ask me what made Terence Crawford and these other legends so good, and I tell them it’s the strength of North Omaha. There’s something about being raised in North Omaha, the culture, the oppression, the red lining, the disadvantages, the barriers, the adversity. People just deal with what they have. Greatness comes from no matter what odds are stacked against you, doing whatever it takes to compete at the highest level.”
He said just as they didn’t make excuses for the obstacles they faced, “I never complained about my circumstances. It’s having your heart and living in your purpose, it’s knowing what you want to do and focusing on getting there no matter what you got to go through. That for sure makes us great.”
Much of what Jones does today is an expression of his own Live86400 lifestyle brand that sees him, he said, “actively seek out opportunities to make positive effect in my social network and impacting the community through action.”
He said he’s so embedded in different segments of the community that he feels only “one degree of separation from everybody.” Added Jones, “What I do is I just position myself in a place to be someone’s guide to solutions and collaborate on initiatives. I access their goals and learn who their core audience is. Once I help discover their identity, I create an initiative to reach their goal by working with my resources or networks.”
He’s able to attract partners, he said, “by keeping a good name, having good character, earning trust, being universally respected, not having anything that makes me controversial. It’s authenticity and sincerity of really trying to impact people.” Added Jones, “I try being a voice and beacon of light to advocate for everybody.”
“Consistency,” he said, “is key. But also, I’m here, I’m boots on the ground. I’m a regular guy from North Omaha who’s just connected to resources.”
This social entrepreneur’s work “can be anything,” he said, “from throwing a concert to organizing a backpack drive.”
“That’s what Live86400 is about – it’s all about impacting community through action. I am here for the people in however the community may seem fit to be served. I am a servant leader who is a big activist and organizer for the city in general, but I’ve got a special heart for the inner city.”
With his new sports initiative he intends creating an all-inclusive platform for people to intersect with whatever their interest is – recruiting, NIL, skills camps, coaching clinics, recreation opportunities, league and tournament competitions, program funding resources. He wants to do a local ESPY award to recognize area sports greats.
After his third open heart surgery he got a new insight into life that changed everything for him.
“I was having a conversation with some fellow 20-something-year-olds. One of them explained to me that he lived to maximize his day. He said, ‘You don’t live 24/7, you live 86400.’ I said, ‘What’s that?’ And he said, ‘Well, there’s 86,400 seconds in a day.’ And from that point on I became motivated to maximize each moment and not waste time. During that time I had a change of heart both figuratively and literally.”
From then till now, he’s lived a purpose-driven life to help elevate others, particularly his inner-city brothers and sisters.
“My focus and work are rooted in eastern Omaha — especially North Omaha — where so much pride and talent continue to come from. I feel like people in North Omaha are only waiting for opportunity (some are making their own). If you put certain opportunities there it will create more employment, more inspiration.”
He knows it first-hand. “All it took for me was a chance. Somebody took a chance on me, and I took advantage of my opportunity.” He hopes his sports initiative will be a difference maker.
“I feel like if you put certain things in place to inspire kids to conduct and prepare themselves then once opportunity comes, they’re going to fly. A lot of people are given a chance and they’re not ready because they didn’t have the resources in the beginning. That’s what it comes down to for me – resources. I didn’t even think I was going to get a shot. I was just passionate and blessed to being extraordinary in the category of self-sufficient. But not everybody is like me.
“People just need to feel there’s hope because there are resources and networks right in their own background where they can get a chance.”
He came up in a community where people pulled for each other. He experienced the power of “sticking together in your own neighborhood in building resources and networks around you.” As a result, he said, “You develop a camaraderie and a chemistry, you develop skills and talents, and then you get out there and lay it on the line to compete.
And we won in basketball, football and track.”
He sees “a new day and age” in North Omaha as Black-led businesses and initiatives spark development and change. He saw it and felt it at the August Native Omaha Days.
“Native Omaha Days means to me community heritage and endearment. There are so many great people and legacies that come out of North Omaha. People go away but come back to celebrate the glory, the pride, the culture and the heritage. People are proud to say they’re from North Omaha.”
Jones would like his alma mater to be more connected to that community whose southernmost margins it borders. “My goal is to get Creighton more integrated into North Omaha. When I was in school Creighton annexed itself as a part of downtown and not North Omaha, and I am trying to fix that. I’m the guy to do it, too.”
Having found his mission of being wherever community happens, he said, “Going home to my family at the end of day what satisfies me is knowing that I’m living in my God-given purpose. I’m doing what I was born to do. As long as the things that I have a heart for are functioning then I haven’t worked a day in my life.”
