A life of giving. A night of cheering; In Lowell Sun

Fred Simon has always helped those in need. On Friday he'll hear just how much it means
By Jennifer Myers on November 27th 2011:

Fred Simon stops into Lowell's Owl Diner for a BLT club on rye, homefries and a coffee. Everyone knows him.

A waitress comes by to say hello and ask about his Thanksgiving dinner. She mentions a fundraiser the following night in North Reading for a young mother recently diagnosed with cancer. Simon says he will not be able to make it, but pulls $20 out of his pocket and hands it to her, telling her to toss it into the kitty for him.

"Don't put my name on it or anything," he says. "Just toss it in."

He has never said no to someone in need. That is who he is.

"If someone needs something, they know to call Freddy," says former Tewksbury Selectman John Ryan, who co-chaired the Tewksbury 9-11 Committee with Simon. "He is always raising funds or selling tickets for something and people always respond to him because they know whatever he is doing will truly help someone else out. He is genuine."

On Friday night, Simon will be honored (and roasted) at Lenzi's in Dracut in honor of his 75th birthday. Proceeds will help the WCAP Salvation Army Radio-thon.

"Life has been pretty good to me," Simon says. "I have a great wife, three beautiful daughters and four grandchildren, and when you have been that fortunate you have to give back."

Simon has, he said, always lived by the golden rule -- treat others the way you wish to be treated.

"If there is someone who is having trouble paying the electric bill or putting food on the table and you can help, why wouldn't you? You would want someone to be a champion for you if you were in the same situation.

"If we all lived like that ... man, would we be in a better place or what?" he asks.

Fred Simon was born Dec. 10, 1936. The Simons -- Charles, who worked at the Hingham Naval Shipyard during World War II, his wife Millie and their seven kids -- lived at Adams and Cross streets in Lowell's Acre neighborhood, a block of triple-deckers strung together on the site where Market Basket now stands.

"We didn't have a lot, nobody did, but we didn't know we didn't have a lot," says Fred Simon. "It was a great place to grow up."

The neighborhood was tough, but close-knit; if you were up to shenanigans, your parents would certainly hear about it. Everyone looked out for everyone else in the Lowell of the 1940s and 50s.

Slapping his hand down over the change box, the Eastern Massachusetts Railway bus driver on the Kearney Square/Andover Street route refused to let the two young boys pay the nickel fare.

"We looked like two street urchins," Fred Simon recalls of he and his brother John's teenage selves. "We had the money, but Mr. McMahon (grandfather of Lowell developer Brian McMahon) would never let us pay. We were scared of him at first."

"Get in there," he would bellow, motioning the two boys to board the bus.

The two Acre "urchins" were headed to Andover's Livingston's Farm where they labored picking corn and weeding for two bits (25 cents) an hour. A 40-hour work week earned them $10.

Irving Livingston was an old Yankee with a strong work ethic. Frugal and fair.

When Fred Simon was 16 years old, his mother died at home after a long battle with cancer. She was only 53.

"It was really traumatic for me, devastating," he recalled during a recent afternoon in the kitchen of his Tewksbury home. "I didn't want to do anything, didn't want to go to school."

His sister Mary, who was 31 years old at the time, took over as matriarch. She refused to let him quit school. She kept him on the right track.

At Lowell High School that sense of the straight and narrow continued under the watchful eye of legendary teacher and administrator Thomas Murphy, father of state Rep. Kevin Murphy.

"If you were goofing off at all and he caught your eye that was it, you stopped instantaneously," recalls Simon (class of 1954). "We were all afraid of Mr. Murphy. He was strict, but fair."

It was the people who were present in his formative years: McMahon, Livingston, Murphy, Mary and all those tough, but family-minded Acre neighbors who made a lasting impact on young Fred Simon.

"Everybody you come in contact with leaves an imprint one way or another, for better or worse," Simon says. "Luckily, most of the people we came across were salt of the earth, good, hardworking people."

Ask anybody in the Merrimack Valley about Fred Simon and you are sure to hear him described the same way. Everybody knows Freddy -- the charismatic guy with hands the size of catcher's mitts and a heart twice that size.

A donor to the cause for years, Simon became the Salvation Army Radio-thon's honorary chairman five years ago at the request of host Warren Shaw. Last year, the event brought in more than $100,000 to help local families.

Simon and his overflowing Rolodex busting with index cards, yellow, blue and pink scrap papers and sticky notes containing the digits of his hundreds of "buddies," was the needed boost.

Zillions of contacts made over a lifetime of work and service. Simon worked at Met Life for 24 years, followed by a decadelong stint in the Patriot Missile Program at Raytheon, until the early 1990s when the defense industry bottomed out.

His contact list lengthened when he took a couple shots at politics, running for North Middlesex Register of Deeds in 1994 (he lost out in the primary to Dick Howe Jr.) and in 1998 running for state Senate when Sen. John O'Brien, for whom he was working, retired (he lost out in the primary to Sue Tucker).

Simon then went to work in constituent services for Sen. Steve Panagiotakos, then for the Middlesex County Sheriff's Department.

Simon will crack open that Rolodex and start making calls for the Salvation Army right after his birthday party.

"It just means so much to him," says his daughter Julie Simon, a Tyngsboro teacher who lives in Dracut. "That is what we give him for Christmas, a donation and a call in to the Radio-thon to wish him a happy birthday. What else can you give him? That is his passion."

Growing up, Julie Simon knew her dad was different.

"We would drive through downtown Lowell and he would be waving to everyone, people would call out to him in the street, everyone knew him," she recalls.

The tables have since turned, a bit.

"Now my sisters and I have become as well known in some circles and people will say to him 'oh you're Julie Simon's dad'," she says, adding her father's influence led her and her two sisters Millie (a registered nurse) and Maria (a teacher) into community service.

"He set a great example for us," she says. "It is no surprise we are all in helping professions."

Over the years Fred Simon has been involved in scores of charitable organizations: He performed in the shows put on by Bud Caulfield's Highlands Players, was the driving force that created the Tewksbury 9-11 Memorial, is a member of the Patient Family Advisory Council at Saints Medical Center, and has been a key player behind fundraisers run by Owl Diner Charities benefiting local kids and families for 20 years.

"He is just super," Owl Diner owner Tom Shanahan says of Simon. "You ask him to do something and he never thinks twice."

Fred and Julie Simon agree he would not have been able to do everything he has without the rock-like support of his wife of 52 years, Elaine, the woman behind the man.

"I could not have done any of this without her being at home keeping the home fires burning," Simon says of his sweetheart, the former Elaine Anasoulis, of Peabody, whom he met at a Greek picnic in Lynnfield. "I saw her that day and it was just ... unbelievable."

Simon's desire to help people extends beyond raising money. Panagiotakos recalled he was always ready to "suit up" to help out a constituent.

"There was a woman in West Groton who had a terrible beaver situation, they were really multiplying and causing havoc with flooding," Panagiotakos said. "Fred went out here to check it out and he really wanted to get into his work."

The senator was unaware, until a visit to the Clover Farm Market the following week, of how committed his aide was to the beaver problem.

"Your man was up here last week, caused quite a disturbance," market owner Winnie Sherwin told him.

"A disturbance?" asked a bewildered Panagiotakos.

"He came out to examine the beaver dam and asked the woman if he could go into the house and change," explained Sherwin. "He came out and had one of those wetsuits on, like a diver. We never knew a wetsuit stretched that far."

Simon always put in the extra time and effort, Panagiotakos said, "and everyone loved him."

City Councilor Rita Mercier said she called Simon one day, when he was working for Panagiotakos, to request a citation for the 100th birthday of a woman living in a nursing home in Chelmsford.

"Not only did he get me the citation, he asked to come with me to the nursing home," marveled Mercier. "Before I knew it, he was visiting with everyone there and I thought, 'Holy Moses, this guy is going to make a day of this.' We stayed for hours. He is a true goodwill ambassador."

Goodwill goes out the window on Friday night. Mercier is ready to roast him.

"I'm going to rip his face off," she laughed.

 

[This article about the first-generation Saidnayan-American Frederick Simon was written by Jennifer Myers in the Lowell Sun newspapers on November 27^th 2011.
 

Fred was born in Lowell, MA to a father, Charles Simon (Shehadeh Sim'an), who was born in Saidnaya. His mother, Millie, was born in Lebanon]