Tony Jones (General Hospital)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Anthony "Tony" Jones was a long-running fictional character played by actor Brad Maule on the American soap opera General Hospital. He was the steadier brother of fictional WSB spy Andrew "Frisco" Jones. His early years on the show included a number of typical soap opera tragedies, including temporary blindness, his wife Tania Roskov's death in a car accident soon after the birth of their daughter, and the marital infidelity of his second wife, Lucy Coe. Tony later married his friend Bobbie Spencer, who adopted his daughter Barbara Jean "BJ" Jones, who had been named in her honor after Bobbie helped deliver BJ in a stalled elevator. Tony and Bobbie adopted Lucas together. They had to return him to his birth mother, Cheryl Stansbury, when it turned out he had been illegally adopted, but they were granted guardianship of Lucas a year later when Cheryl was killed in a car accident. Tony and Bobbie successfully fought for custody of Lucas against his maternal aunt, Tiffany Donely.

Tony's most memorable story came in 1994, when his young daughter BJ was killed in a school van accident and he made the decision to allow BJ's heart to be transplanted into her ailing cousin, Maxie. One of the most heart-breaking scenes ever seen on General Hospital showed Tony laying his head on Maxie's chest and listening to his daughter's heart beat within his niece. It was a storyline that won much acclaim and several awards for writing and for acting.

Later, after his marriage to Bobbie broke up under the stress of her infidelity with Damian Smith and the loss of BJ, he became romantically involved with Carly Benson, the daughter Bobbie gave up for adoption as a teenager. When Carly became pregnant by Alan "AJ" Quartermaine Jr., she was initially uncertain whether Tony or AJ had fathered her son Michael. When the baby was born, his blood type proved that he could not be Tony's son, but Tony still felt like the father because he had cared for him during the months of Carly's pregnancy. He kidnapped baby Michael from Carly for a time. Michael was recovered and Tony was put on trial, but was found not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Carly then shot and seriously wounded him in open court.

Tony eventually rehabilitated himself and returned to his practice as a neurosurgeon. In recent years, he has been largely a backburner character. He was supportive when his adopted son, Lucas Jones, told his parents he was gay. Tony died in February 2006 during an encephalitis epidemic at General Hospital.