Thomas Simmons

DELMAR, Iowa -- Services for Thomas M. Simmons, Delmar, will be 11
a.m. Wednesday at St. Patrick's Catholic Church, Delmar. Burial will
be in St.  Patrick's Cemetery, Delmar. Visitation is 2-8 p.m.  today
at Haylock-O'Hara & Lahey Funeral Home, Maquoketa, with a vigil at 5
p.m. and a prayer service at 8 p.m. Mr. Simmons died Saturday, Sept.
29, 2001, at University Hospitals, Iowa City, after a farm
accident. He had farmed all his adult life.  He was born July 18,
1970, in Maquoketa. He married Jennifer Popenhagen in 1997 in Cedar
Rapids.  Survivors include his wife, Jennifer; a son, Drew A., at
home; his mother and stepfather, Ed and Mary Noel, Wheatland; a
sister, Tricia Simmons, Cedar Rapids; a stepsister, Cindy Stevenson,
Cascade; a brother, Dan, Lost Nation; stepbrothers, Chris Noel,
Meridian, Idaho, and Mark Noel, Dixon; grandmothers, Marie Farrell,
Delmar, and Darleen Simmons, Maquoketa; and step-grandparents, Ed and
Euphrosenia Noel, DeWitt.

Oct. 2, 2001
Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA
QCTimes.com



		   To live ... and to die on a farm
				   
		   By Bill Wundram/ QUAD-CITY TIMES


To die so young was a mistake for Tom Simmons, 31. 

Death is always bitter, and there are so many tragic coincidences in the death
of Simmons, a young Delmar, Iowa, farmer with the big country smile. 

His funeral, compared to his death, might be called pleasant -- if a funeral can
ever be called that. His body was borne to the cemetery in his hayrack, pulled
by his green John Deere tractor. 

HIS DEATH, though, at University Hospitals in Iowa City, was so inconsolable, a
coincidental family dirge of "live on the farm, die on the farm."

Simmons died a week or so ago after a fall from a silo near Delmar. 

In 1978, his godfather and uncle, Pat Farrell, of Elvira, died after a fall from a
silo. 

In 1992, a fall from a tree claimed another uncle, Kenneth Farrell, in rural
Goose Lake. 

Always, there has been death on the farm for the family. Tom's grandfather, Tad
Farrell, didn't come in for supper one wintry night. "No one could find grandpa,"
a relative remembers. Family searched. He had died of a heart attack in the hog
pen and the animals -- a grisly thought -- had worked over his body. 

TOM SIMMONS was always a farm kid, a lad who eagerly worked the fields with
the grownups. He went to college to be taught farm management, then returned
to the land for which only a farmer can have true reverence. 

A friend remembers, "He always had his hand out to shake a greeting or to help.
It was a big hand, a farmer's hand. Everybody knew him." 

Country folks take tragedy like this with terrible grief. Visitation at the funeral
home was supposed to be over at 8 p.m., but it was 10 before the last mourner
left. Some had been in line an hour-and-a-half. 

AT ST. PATRICK'S Catholic Church in Delmar, the casket was placed between
2 x 4's on Tom's hayrack, girdled by stalks of brittle corn and bundles of
soybeans. Green carpeting was all around, and volunteers from Delmar's fire
department (he was a member) stood alongside the casket while the rack was
pulled to the cemetery. 

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave where is thy victory?" Eugene O'Neill
wrote that in "Mourning Becomes Electra."

There is no victory in death for Tom's wife, Jennifer, and their 6-month-old son,
Drew. But there was consolation and some comfort in that he was an organ
donor. 

The family learned this week that Tom's heart has gone to ... a farmer. 

Quad-City Times, Davenport, IA
QCTimes.com