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- Loren A. Simmons’ Story…
When Loren was nearly sixty years old, he was about to travel outside the U.S. on business and needed his birth certificate. When he received his copy, he was in for a big surprise: his legal name was Albert Loren, NOT Loren Albert. And his birth date was a few days off the December 8th date he'd always known.
When he queried his mother, Celia, regarding this, she giggled and said, "why that can't be!" Well, when the explanations became convoluted and started to contradict each other, she finally came clean. “Loren” was not a Biblical name, a requirement that Roman Catholics had when naming a child. But her family expected them to name their first-born son after his father. Loren Thomas Simmons was from a Baptist family and he never really participated in organized religion. So...she did some creative altering on his birth certificate. She officially named my father “Albert” but raised him as “Loren.” Well, my dad corrected the situation by legally changing his name to “Loren Albert” in the early 1980s.
But we sure had fun teasing him, calling him “Big Al” for a while!
Loren met Geraldine (“Gerrie”) Truax in high school – he was a senior and she was a freshman. He noticed Gerrie from afar and asked a mutual friend, “Who that long, tall drink of water" was. Gerrie was typically one of the tallest girls in her class throughout her childhood. At 14 years old, she stood 5 feet, 10 inches tall and apparently, her stature won Loren's attention quite handily.
Their first date was on May 22, 1942 when they met after the senior play. They proceeded to a popular malt shop, The “W Shop,” for a milkshake and french fries. Loren was also known to drop in to Gerrie's homeroom class periodically, to simply catch a glimpse of her. Gerrie participated in drama productions and she continued her dancing. Loren was a champion swimmer in high school and went to the state finals his senior year. His swimming skills would come in handy, teaching each of his three children to swim. I especially enjoyed this during my childhood summers.
After high school, Loren headed for the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. After only 1 year he joined the V12 program with the U.S. Marine Corps. This would take him to Notre Dame University to study engineering, through boot camp at Parris Island and then on to pre-Officers Candidate School at Camp Lejeune. Also, he would most notably find himself stationed in Nagasaki, Japan, for 10 months after the atomic bomb was dropped. He was in the Engineering Battalion and their mission was to repair roads and construct maps of the bombed-out area. We still have many pictures of Loren taken in the aftermath of the bomb’s devastation.
Upon his return home, Loren was offered a sales engineer position with Cyclone Fence, the company his father worked for all his life. As was customary in the post-war economic expansion, Loren took the job without finishing his college degree. He and Gerrie got married on August 30, 1946, and proceeded to move first to Cleveland and then to Pittsburgh with his new job.
But the Korean conflict called Loren back into the Marines for 2 years. While attending amphibious warfare training at Quantico, Virginia, he would sit right next to John Glenn. Yes, as in John Glenn the astronaut, the first man to orbit the Earth. My father tells a story of how John Glenn was trying to persuade him to go into a flight program. He also buddied up to Loren and wanted him to join him on a weekend 'boys’' getaway to Chicago. However, Gerrie wanted him home and my father declined.
When he returned from the Korean conflict, he worked for the Simmons Flour & Feed business that his grandfather, Peter Rouse Simmons, and his uncle, Roscoe Simmons, had established in the Waukegan area. Loren had his sights set on inheriting the business from his Uncle Roscoe, who had no children of his own; Loren speculated that this could be a good business opportunity. Unfortunately, there wasn't a substantial future in place and Loren realized after 5 years that this not a real opportunity.
He went back to Cyclone Fence and then, briefly, to Alloy Wire Belt. He finally landed at Ashworth Brothers, where he was a sales engineer in the Midwestern territory. As young kids, we often accompanied my parents on my father’s summer business trips – a mini vacation if you will, traveling through Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
Ashworth Brothers would eventually promote Loren to a management position in California in 1979. I remember how hard I fought my parents’ desire to uproot me from my hometown. However, I could see how excited they were at chasing their dreams in California, and after our move, we embarked on a thrilling new chapter. We loved the California life and after the initial upheaval of moving, we all embraced it fully.
Loren has a significant place in the Simmons family history: after 4 generations in northern Illinois, Loren migrated his family westward.
Loren and Gerrie lived in the Monterey Bay area of Northern California from 1979 until their deaths; Gerrie passed away in 2004 and Loren passed away in 2013.
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Simmons-Truax-Godbout-Ames Family Tree
1924 - 2013 (88 years)
