Native of Goleta Valley, David was the 8th child of Eugenie Genik, native of Ukraine, and Charles Arthur Jones, native of London, England.The Jones family farm was on Fairview Avenue, between the current Calle Real and US 101. As a boy, Davey helped tend the family's beans, walnuts and alfalfa, and played at Goleta Beach and the Goleta Slough. David graduated from Goleta Union Grammar School, La Cumbre Junior High, and in 1936 from Santa Barbara High School, where he was the Captain of the ROTC. He graduated in 1940 from Santa Barbara State College.
Following college, he joined the Army Air Corps and attended flight school (learning to fly in biplanes) at Camp Pendleton, San Diego County, and at Kelly and Lackland Fields in San Antonio, Texas. While earning his wings, he met and later married Kathleen Scanlon of San Antonio, his wife of more than 60 years. David served in the Air Force for 26 years. In the early years of WWII, he trained as a bomber pilot at air bases throughout the country. He deployed to North Africa in 1943 and Italy in 1944, where he piloted B-17 bombers in nearly 40 combat missions. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Croix de Guerre. David was one of five Goleta Joneses in uniform during the war.
After the war, David worked at the Pentagon and in the Strategic Air Command. He also attended the Army language school at Monterey where he became fluent in Spanish and served as a military attache in Ecuador and the Philippines. He was promoted to Colonel at the age of 33 and was affectionately known as "The Colonel" and, in Spanish, "Coronel" for the rest of his days.
In 1966 he retired from the Air Force and returned with his family to his beloved Santa Barbara. He was a man of deep faith and a member of All Saints by the Sea Episcopal Church of Montecito which he first attended in the 1930s. He was an avid investor and sports fan, particularly of USC football and Los Angeles Lakers basketball.