Dr. Robert E. Simpson

Tim’s Comments

Dad’s Nature

I am here to give you some insight into my father’s being that you may not have understood or seen to give you some idea of the nature of him. 

Dad was a psychologist, a “Mentalist” of sorts. He believed in his thoughts. He believed that what we think determines who we are. He believed that the threat of guilt was the guard rail that kept us from driving into the ditch in life. As his son, I naturally disagree with all of these notions and we, with my brother, would often have long philosophical discussions on these types of topics, along with our expert armchair football strategies. 

He believed in hard work and if the work wasn’t hard, well, you had to make it hard so it had some value to it. Growing up with Dad was rather intimidating because of his physical strength. He was very energetic, very powerful, a force of nature...Mary Anthony dubbed him accurately, “Mr. Universe.” Dad “hustled” at everything he did and when he got on a jag it was hard to rip him from it. Basically, he was like a dormant volcano and you knew that an epic eruption of energy was possible at any given moment. 

Dad was a saver…of everything... from used tissues in his pajama pockets to money. Old paint cans, rusty crooked screws, one sided scissors and the list goes on and on...no tool outlived its usefulness as long as you wore old tattered gloves. He wrote a lot of papers and was a scrapbook guy. No binder was big enough and that bulge under the mass of indecipherable scribble he left behind. He wrote poems without editing them, and his rhyming was … let’s call it “forced”. 

Dad was always very intent on visiting people, the elderly, the sick, and wanted to visit every house in Union County and as soon as we drove over the border he started giving us all the complete biographies of every person he knew throughout his life as we passed from place to place. The speed limit for Dad was 25 mph in Union County...which didn’t always sit well with those aching to get out of the car at the end of a long trip. 

Dad and Mom were much like oil and water to be honest, but they were always there for each other when things got difficult. When they had to be in the hospital, they would spend the night as well if possible. 

Dad didn’t like serious operas very much. He liked the pieces that had happy endings. He liked to laugh and enjoyed comedy. He couldn’t figure out why people loved operas where the end of the story is the death of the main character. 

Dad did not believe in death. He never thought in terms of death. To him, everyone gets better and will live forever. No matter how often I told him Mom was going to die he never believed me. Death was always a surprise to him. With Dad the phrase “Never say die” takes on new meaning. Yet, he would be the first person to want to hold your hand when you took your last breath.

Dad genuinely cared about people. He was always happy to see people, always wanted to shake every hand, and always had that infectious personality that seemed to be the hallmark of the Diddle era at WKSC with an “enthusiasm unknown to man”.