Services for Ms. Barbara Sue Simkins were held at 11:00 A.M. on Tuesday, October 29, 2024, at Clarke Venable Baptist Church with burial at Mississippi Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Newton.
Rev. Mark Vincent officiated.
Visitation was held one hour prior to the service at the church.
Ms. Simkins, age 88, passed away Sundday, October 20, 2024.
Mom has now joined her husband Billy again, and so let’s take a moment to reflect on and to be thankful for such a long life filled with more joy than pain. Born in the middle of the Great Depression, Sue grew up in the Mississippi countryside surrounded by her siblings, her cousins, and many other loved relatives and friends across several generations. Early on she discovered her gift for singing, and with her mother Mittie Lou accompanying her on piano, she rehearsed her strong, lovely soprano and would go on to sing in church choirs, college choruses, and at weddings and funerals for years to come. She got to sing at Clarke-Venable Baptist Church in her hometown and at Riverdale Baptist Church in Hampton, Virginia.
She also developed an intense passion for basketball, first as a player, and later as a fan. Her enthusiasm for the Boston Celtics could get rather loud. But her greatest talent and her greatest service was to teach and love children, both her own two sons whom she and her husband Billy raised, and the hundreds of fifth graders she taught for nearly thirty years, and then finally her own beloved grandchildren. In part because it was near the elementary school, she liked retiring to her new home on her return to Mississippi years ago, where she could hear the shouts and laughter of the schoolchildren at recess while she sat on her front porch swing.
Looking back on her life now, I wonder where she found the energy and will to accomplish all that she did, raising her sons, teaching school five days a week, grading at home, cooking meals, choir rehearsals on Wednesday nights, and volunteering to teach Sunday School in the morning and then singing in the choir for services afterward. This is the more remarkable when we consider her introverted nature, the lack of self-confidence she sometimes remarked on; yet still she did pack up with her new husband sixty years ago, leaving her loving extended family behind in Mississippi to carve out their new life in the foreign land of Virginia among strangers. And she, with her new family and new friends, prospered in joy and more service.
Survivors include two sons, Dr. Scott Simkins and Ret. Ltc Steve Simkins and wife Michele; three Grandchildren, Daniel Simkins, Morgan Simkins and Will Simkins; brother, Chris Harris and wife DeAnne and sister, Patsy Ritter.
Ms. Simkins is preceded in death by her husband, Bill Simkins; parents, James C. and Mittie Lou Harris and two brothers, Jerry Harris and Pat Harris.
Pallbearers were Cole Harris, Daniel Simkins, Corey Cleveland, Dylan Barnett, Greg Warren and Mike Smith.
Honorary Pallbearers were Chris Harris and Kevin Morrison.
Milling Funeral Home of Union is in charge of the arrangements.
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