Jim Simmen

I was born and raised in San Francisco , California, and I eventually moved to a little country town, Danville, California. Upon graduating my Charlotte Woods grammar school, I went to St. Joseph's Catholic seminary in Mt. View, California for 6 years( this was years before the earthquake and the sex scandals of the 90s closed the seminary). In the 60, I left the seminary and attended UC Berkeley and became a member of the Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity on Warring St. i graduated with a degree in business. Right after college, I joined the Army and became a 2nd Lieutenant at Ft. Benning, Georgia, and shipped off to Vietnam where i was a mechanized Infantry Platoon leader with the 5th/60th/9th Infantry Division and the 1st/16th/First Division. On May 8, 1968, during the Mini-Tet Offensive, I was wounded by enemy fire in a small village outside of Saigon. I shipped off to Japan for a couple of months and then returned to my unit to eventually finish out my year in Vietnam. I was awarded 2 purple hearts and a Silver Star for gallantry.

After the war, I taught scuba diving for a while in San Diego before moving to Alaska for 13 years. I lived on Kodiak island for 5 years, but I loved the interior of Alaska where I had the opportunity to extensively travel as a carpenter foreman for Public Health Service, providing water and sewer to the indigenous villages.

Then onto Bermuda with work as an environmentalist and natural resource officer and I established Cooper Island Nature Park, which at that time was on Navy property.

From Bermuda to Key West Florida, I continued my work with the navy as an environmental officer.

During my life, I was married 3 times with 3 children. I am an avid photographer, still the environmentalist, plus now a gardener and ballroom dancer.