Lee Downey & Vi Simmons- A Special Friendship

Miss Simmons knew me before I knew her. The connection was my mother.

Leola Morrison (Downey) and Violet Simmons met at the New York State College for Teachers at Albany in 1928. Students of modest means - as they both were - earned their room and board by working in the homes of families in Albany. Their interest in history, their wonderful senses of humor and their common experience of working their way through college led to a close friendship.

In 1934, Mom had finished some graduate work and Miss Simmons - who had returned to Millerton to teach 7th and 8th grade - told her of an opening for a 5th and 6th grade teacher.

She got the job. The fact that Miss Simmons’s father was president of the school board may have helped. When Mr. Simmons sent her information about her new job, he wrote on the back of it: “You’ll have to make good; I told the Board you were a wonder.” Why should we be surprised that Mom and Miss Simmons preached the gospel of high expectations?

Also written on those materials was the admonition: “Boyfriends for young lady teachers not encouraged.” Mom didn’t always take direction well. During her first few years of teaching, she took a shine to a handsome, charming guy who operated a gas station at Millerton’s checkerboard corner. She and Gus Downey were married in 1939.

That’s how I came into the picture.

The first significant memories I have of the relationship between my mother and Miss Simmons were from the period when Miss Simmons began to lose her vision. Her retinas began to detach and it was a frightening and difficult time for her. I have a recollection of many conversations between them about this and of my mother’s concern. Ultimately with the help of the medical community and the encouragement of her friends and colleagues - especially Dr. Josephine Evarts, Diane Hutchinson ( a nurse and former student), my mother and our superintendent, Myron Rindsberg - Miss Simmons decided to continue to teach.

As time passed, I grew to know Miss Simmons as a teacher and then as a friend. On the afternoon of her 90th birthday I called her and she told me with amazement and gratitude of all of the people who had contacted her that day. The next morning, sitting in her chair waiting for Alan “Dewey” Merwin to drive her to her regular hair appointment, she had a heart attack and died.

Like my mother, Miss Simmons had a remarkable ability to adjust to change while not changing in any fundamental way. During 48 years of teaching she saw extraordinary changes in her profession, in the students she taught and the world in which she taught them. During nearly half of that period she dealt with the trauma of diminishing eyesight. She adjusted, she persevered and she excelled.

Those values which guided her life have now found permanent expression in the Violet H. Simmons Scholarship Program which was started to honor her retirement and which she generously endowed at her death. The Program, with the help of the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, is administered by the Trustees of the Violet H. Simmons Scholarship Fund, Inc.; PO Box 496, Millerton, NY 12546.

by Ed Downey, class of '63