Bob Simms was born in Snow Hill, Alabama in 1927. Shortly after his birth, Bob Simms' parents Alberta (1888-1970) and Harry Simms (1884-1949) relocated to the community of Tuskegee, Alabama, as members of the music faculty. Harry Simms was one of Dr. Washington Carver's students in the class of 1907 and often took his youngest son Bob with him on visits to Dr. Carver's home.
Bob Simms moved to Florida in 1953 to join the faculty of the George Washington Carver schools in Coconut Grove and later served as Executive Director of the Metro Dade Community Relations Board from 1968 to 1983. Mr. Simms developed the Miami Inner-City Minority Experience (MICME) for the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1970s and led efforts to create and implement the Inner City Marine Project - now known as Mast Academy. With his wife Aubrey Watkins Simms, he was a founding member of the Church of the Open Door in Liberty City and is the father if the first black woman to serve as judge in Florida, Leah Simms. Mr. Simms is Emeritus Member of the University of Miami, Board of Trustees.
Charles Torrey Simpson was a naturalist, responsible for many classifications and discoveries in both flora and fauna, and author of many scientific articles. Simpson was born near Tiskilwa, Illinois on June 3, 1946. At seventeen, he enlisted as a private in company F of the 57th Ill. infantry for the Civil War. In 1870 he enlisted in the US navy and served three years on the "Shenandoah" on the European station, where he made collections of natural history material. In 1882 he moved to Bradenton, Fla., where he conducted a building and contracting business and studied botany. In 1889 he went to the Smithsonian institution, department of mollusks, and remained on the institution's staff until 1902. In 1903 he established his home on Biscayne Bay, near Miami, Fla., and devoted his studies to the flora and fauna of south Florida. He had a collection of 20,000 species of shells, of which he personally collected 4,000. Simpson introduced a number of foreign plants into this country and aided in developing other species indigenous to Florida and the tropics. From 1914 on he was a collaborator with the U.S. department of agriculture. In 1923 he was awarded the Meyer medal for plant introduction by the American Genetic Association and in 1927 Miami University conferred on him the honorary degree of Sc.D. Simpson died at Miami, Fla., December 17, 1932.
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991) was a Polish-born Jewish American Nobel Prize-winning author and one of the leading figures in the Yiddish literary movement.
