Jackie Simms: Creating a More Humane Society
|
| Jackie Simms, president of the Ethical Society of Asheville. |
Staff Reports
Jackie Simms, president of the Ethical Society of Asheville, spent her earliest years as Jacquelyn Shropshire of St. Joseph, Missouri, where her father, Arthur C. Shropshire, was supervising administrator of colored schools.
Mr. Shropshire was born in Paris, MO, and was prevented by Jim Crow laws from attending graduate school in his home state. Facing such bias, he had to travel to the University of Nebraska to pursue his masters and doctorate degrees; after he earned a Ph.D. in Educational Supervision and Administration, Dr. Shropshire became Director of the Division of Education at Langston University in Oklahoma.
Jackie’s mother, Grace Steward Shropshire, came from DeSoto, MO, and
she, like her daughter, grew up attending segregated schools. Acutely
aware of racial discrimination, and that education is the key to
opportunity, Jackie earned her Bachelor of Science in Elementary
Education from Langston and a Master of the Education of the Deaf
(M.E.D.) degree from Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts.
She
married Frederick Emory Simms of St. Louis, MO, son of Frederick T.
Simms and Margaret Emory Simms, and a graduate of Yale University. Their
only child, Charis, valuing education like her parents and
grandparents, graduated from Georgetown University with a BS in Foreign
Service and from UNC-Chapel Hill with an MBS. She currently lives in
Atlanta, GA and is employed by AT&T as a Senior Product Manager.
Jackie and Fred have lived in Arden since fall 1990.
Jackie
retired with 44 years’ experience in teaching and administration of
programs for children, youth, and adults with hearing loss in Amarillo,
TX, St. Louis County, MO, and in western North Carolina. While in
Missouri she co-authored two chapters in the book, The Speech Clinician
and the Hearing Impaired Child, and published an article, “Individuals
All,” in the Missouri State Teachers Association Journal on vocational
assessment and training for youth with hearing loss.
As a Hearing
Itinerant Teacher employed by the Special School District of St. Louis
County Jackie taught children from kindergarten through 12th grade who
were academically successful as fully mainstreamed students in their
neighborhood public schools. She worked in North Carolina as director of
a group home for deaf adults who had a second disability; as a
Parent-Infant Educator serving the western mountain counties; director
of the Preschool Satellite Program for Children who are Deaf or Hard of
Hearing; and as a certified Infant, Toddler & Family Specialist and
an Exceptional Needs Specialist (Early Childhood through Young
Adulthood).
Simms became involved with Ethical Culture in 1978
when she enrolled Charis in Sunday school class at the Ethical Society
of St. Louis. She had overheard the five-year-old daughter tell a group
of friends discussing religious backgrounds that she was “nothing.”
Simms knew she needed to find a values community that supported her own
personal values as a human being.
“I did want my daughter to have
values and be surrounded by people who lived ethical lives,” Simms says.
“We consider ourselves a non-theistic, humanist religion. We come
together to pursue ethical issues and work together to try to make a
more humane society.”
When Fred’s job transferred the couple to
Asheville, “the Ethical Society was what I missed most,” Simms says.
Fortunately, the retired leader of the New York Society for Ethical
Culture (founded in 1876), had retired to Asheville with his wife, and
Simms got together with him in 2001.
“He had settled into the
vacation cabin that he and his wife had here. We had a meeting at his
home, contacted people we thought would be interested and people we
heard had moved here and had belonged to other Ethical Societies
wherever they lived before,” Simms said.
When the retired leader
moved away the next year, Simms became president of the board of
trustees for the newly formed group. After several years meeting in
members’ homes, the group moved to the Botanical Gardens for six or
seven years, gradually filling the library, then the large meeting room,
and finally outgrowing both. It now meets twice a month (see calendar,
page 2) at the Friends Meeting House on Edgewood Road in north
Asheville.
The Ethical Society of Asheville believes in deed above creed, valuing people’s actions above all.
“It’s
a place for people who don’t believe, to come together and try to make a
positive impact on the world,” Simms said. “Many of our members are
atheist or agnostic, skeptics, free-thinkers, some may be deists, we
don’t know, we don’t care. That’s not what’s important. What’s important
to us is what you do and how you act and how you treat each other and
how you treat this natural world that we are a part of, which is one of
the reasons why we need to be at the Botanical Gardens; it reminds us of
the natural beauty.”
That philosophy is evident across and
throughout Jackie Simms’s life. In addition to the ESA’s leadership in
the community BUYcott to support a living wage and its ongoing support
of A-Hope homeless shelter, Simms herself is actively involved in making
the community a better place.
As leader of ESA she is an Ethical
Culture Officiant licensed by the American Ethical Union to officiate
weddings, and she also volunteers as a mediator at The Mediation Center;
as a reading coach with Read to Succeed; an active member of Mountain
Area Interfaith Forum and of the Pediatric Audiology Task Force. She
serves on the WCQS Community Advisory Board, as a volunteer with
Building Bridges, and as president of the planning team of Final Exit
Network of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
What do women want? Clearly,
if they’re like Jackie Simms, to do good in the world and make it a
better place for future generations.
