Local ground breaking black model, Terry Wells-Jones, pens memoir

In some ways author and former Milwaukee resident Terry Wells-Jones (inset) has enjoyed a fairy-tale existence of privilege and opportunity that began in 1968 when she was “stopped on the street by the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel” and asked “if I would come in for some photo test shots the next time, I was home from school.” This led to her becoming the first model of any race to appear in a full page color advertisement and a telegram from Oscar de la Renta inviting her to model his fashion designs in New York City.

After a successful decade as a model, Wells-Jones retired and used her education, experience and connections to develop a very successful plan to advance through the corporate world. She went on to shatter one glass ceiling after another as she rose through the upper management ranks of several Fortune 500 companies. Now retired, happily married and living near Palm Springs, CA, she and her husband travel the world and enjoy time with family.

During the COVID-19 shutdown in 2020, Wells-Jones “began digging through old storage files” and eventually decided to write about her remarkable life. Reflections: Looking in the Mirror is the finished product. On March 23, 2023 she visited Boswell Book Store in Milwaukee as part of a nationwide tour to promote her book and the following day she met with The Milwaukee Times Weekly Newspaper for an interview.

Wells-Jones enjoys celebrity status among Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority sisters in Milwaukee and the AKAs receive a “shout out” in an early section of the book. When Wells-Jones entered the University of Wisconsin at Madison on a full academic scholarship in 1964, there were only two African American students on campus until she began recruiting others. Most of the students she recruited had good grades, but lacked the money for tuition or knowledge about financial aid and scholarship programs. She personally met with parents and said she helped seven Milwaukee residents successfully apply.

Beginning at the age of 14, there were a number of traumatic setbacks which should have derailed Wells-Jones from the successful life she has led. While walking home from a high school event in the segregated Deep South where she was born and raised, she accepted a ride from an acquaintance and was raped. She writes of praying in vain that she would not become pregnant. In an age where abortion was illegal and considered immoral by her parents, she was forced to live with a cousin in Milwaukee until after her son was born. Despite this radical change to her life, she managed to graduate with the highest-grade point average among her integrated high school classmates in Milwaukee.

She writes plainly and honestly in Reflections about the sacrifices she has had to make in order to live the life she chose. “People often ask me if I have any regrets about the decisions I’ve made,” she said. “The answer is yes, I had a few regrets, but too few even to mention. I did what I had to do, and saw it through without exceptions. I have learned over the years to count my blessings and not my problems.”