How did Mount Airy native Tanya Jones put the hometown of Andy Griffith and the Bunker Siamese twins on the map?
Courtesy of Tanya Jones
Ekachai Uekrongtham, a playwright who wrote a musical about Chang and Eng Bunker, stands with Tanya Jones at the grave of her great-great-grandfather.
Tanya Jones was attending an auction in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the late 1980s when the founder of The Andy Griffith Show Rerun Watchers Club spotted her name tag and asked, “What is Mount Airy planning to do to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Andy Griffith Show?”
“Quite honestly, I didn’t know it was the 30th anniversary,” says Jones, executive director of the Surry Arts Council in her hometown and Griffith’s. “I was making up stuff. … I had no clue what I was doing. I said, ‘We have no budget, so we’ll just have to play checkers. And I could do walking tours.’”
Courtesy of Tanya Jones
Tanya Jones stands with Andy Griffith (1926-2012), whose TV show brought fame to Mount Airy, North Carolina.
Jones planned a small celebratory event called Mayberry Days, and a mention in The Atlanta Constitution encouraged tourists to stop by on their way to the TV show’s cast reunion in Charlotte in the fall of 1990. Immediately, readers began calling Jones: Are you doing something for children? Will there be a walking tour for the press? Scribbling her spur-of-the-moment promises on a legal pad, she could hash out the details later.
Reporters from several large newspapers arrived for the press tour. Most of them, according to Jones, ended up foregoing the Charlotte event altogether. After the Washington Post’s two-page story on Mayberry Days was picked up by media across the U.S., Jones’ office was flooded with calls from potential visitors asking, “Are you doing this next year?”
Jones, 75, now relies on the internet and social media to promote her beloved Mount Airy. She may be a little less seat-of-the-pants, but the self-proclaimed “numbers person” still often says “yes” on the spot, then figures out a way to make it happen.
A pre-med student who majored in zoology at Duke University simply because there was no biology tract at the time, Jones did cancer research in Winston-Salem in the 1970s.
Returning to Mount Airy a few years later, the lifelong arts enthusiast volunteered as a way to find programs for her three preschool children and ease the feeling that “my wings had been clipped.” When the part-time executive director of the Surry Arts Council left the post, Jones and a couple of fellow board members took turns manning the desk. The pay was low and offered no benefits, and no one else wanted the job. A year later, Jones withdrew from the board and took the helm. “I was very committed to this town because I loved it and I grew up here,” she says. “I wanted things to be better for my kids.”
On the heels of the Andy Griffith 30th anniversary, Jones recalls, “I drank the Kool-Aid of place-based economic development, and tourism was a huge part of that. Our assets were, and still are, [fiddler and banjo player] Tommy Jarrell and our old-time music; Andy Griffith, the biggest hook of all; and the Siamese Twins, who are buried here. For a town of 10,000, we were very rich in place-based assets and things that we could do that other places couldn’t do.”
Thanks to Jones, a collection of memorabilia that had previously moved from place to place found a permanent home in the basement of the Andy Griffith Playhouse, the building where its namesake went to school.
During Mayberry Days in 2004, a statue of characters Andy Taylor and Opie was unveiled, and four years later, the freestanding Andy Griffith Museum opened its doors. Jones also facilitated the donation of the Historic Earle Theatre to house the Old-Time Music Heritage Hall and secured a place for the Theatre on the Blue Ridge Music Trail.
Over the years, another collection had also outgrown its space in the small Playhouse basement. In the summer of 2024, the new Siamese Twins Museum opened across the street to honor Jones’ great-great-grandfather Eng Bunker and his conjoined twin Chang, who settled in Mt. Airy in 1845 after entertaining curious audiences around the world.
Courtesy of Tanya Jones
Conjoined twin Eng Bunker (left) was Tanya Jones’ great-great grandfather.
Jones remembers taking annual bike rides on the twins’ land with her grandfather, who also gave her some original lithographs of the brothers. At the time, she had no clue what they were.
“I grew up knowing about the twins, being proud of the twins, but not really thinking of it as a tourism hook. It was not my lifetime ambition to build a museum,” says Jones. In college, she researched the medical condition of the Bunkers, who were connected at the chest by a band of cartilage. But the desire to pay tribute to her unusual ancestors grew as she collected piles of information about them and chatted with scholars exploring different angles of their story, from psychological to historical to religious. They were, for example, the first Buddhists and the first Siamese residents to become U.S. citizens, hence the name Siamese Twins.
When she tells visitors that not only did the Bunkers marry Caucasian women at a time when interracial marriages were illegal, but that they fathered 22 children between them, “You see the ‘look,’” she notes. “I just call it the ‘look’ because everybody then stares at you. And I say, ‘I know what you are thinking, and those secrets were not passed down to the descendants.’ Depending on the age of those asking the questions, I just say that the way they had children worked, and I’m very happy that it was successful or I wouldn’t be here.”
Barely taking a breath between one venture and the next, Jones is now working to replace the 118-year-old stage and expand the cramped lobby in the Andy Griffith Playhouse.
“It is my passion that keeps me going, and the successes. But what really inspires me is children and seeing their lives changed by the arts. It doesn’t get any easier, especially with the economic downturn in 2008, and the pandemic for basically three years. And [Hurricane] Helene hit during Mayberry Days [in 2024]. You keep having hurdles to cross and we keep trying to be creative.”
Despite her determination, Jones isn’t about to let the Surry Arts Council, or the town, go into debt in pursuit of the next big thing. “If we can’t afford it, we don’t do it. And if we put a shovel in the ground, the money’s in the bank.”
Adds Jones, “I keep telling my husband, ‘This is my last project and then I’ll retire.’ He doesn’t believe me.”
TANYA JONES: 3 MUST-SEE EXHIBITS AT THE SIAMESE TWINS MUSEUM
Their childhood setting. “When you enter the museum, you’re in a setting that mimics Thailand, or Siam, with the floating market and a replica of the Buddhist temple that was in their hometown when they were growing up. It’s still in their hometown.”
Courtesy of Tanya Jones
Brotherly statue. “We have a life-size statue of the Siamese twins. Because of the fact that the twins owned slaves, the city did not want us to put it outside.”
Home sweet home. The brothers took turns staying at their own separate houses. “We have an interior of Eng’s home that burned in 1956. We have an exterior façade of Chang’s home … and we have a large number of artifacts that belonged to the twins: an original copy of a will, a double chair that they used.” Other items include Chang’s flute, which was featured on Antiques Roadshow, and a trunk Eng used on tour.
The story above first appeared in our May / June 2025 issue. For more like it subscribe today or log in with your active BRC+ Membership. Thank you for your support!