Ben Jones

Benjamin Lewis Jones (born August 30, 1941) is an American actor, politician, playwright, and essayist, best known for his role as Cooter Davenport in The Dukes of Hazzard. Jones also served for four years in the United States House of Representatives from January 3, 1989, to January 3, 1993. Early life and career Jones was born in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, near McNair's Railroad Crossing, on August 30, 1941. His father was Hubert C. "Buck" Jones, a railroad section foreman and his mother was Ila Virginia Stephens, the daughter of a railroad section foreman. Within two weeks of his birth, his family moved to Portsmouth, Virginia. The Joneses lived in a "section house", a railroad company shack without indoor plumbing and electricity. That house was next to the Pinners Point Railyard that led to the shipping piers there. He graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School in 1959 and worked at a number of odd jobs to save money for college. In 1960 he entered East Carolina College (now East Carolina University) and in 1961 he was accepted into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, based upon his promise as a writer. At Chapel Hill, Jones spent summers with the railroad on a work train that contracted to various railroads throughout the South. In 1962, while at UNC, he began acting with the Carolina Playmakers and was soon earning money at it in "summer stock" and at the outdoor drama "Unto These Hills" in Cherokee, North Carolina.