Veteran of Pearl Harbor attack didn't talk war much 10/22/2009 8:21 PM
By HALEY HUGHES Staff writer
Henry Mercer Simmons was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu when the attacks began on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.
A U.S. Army Air Corps bunk mate woke Simmons to say they were being bombed.
"Daddy said he pulled the covers over his head like, 'Oh, no,'" said daughter Kathryn Simmons Folden.
Simmons died Wednesday at age 88 in Aiken.
Simmons ran away from his home in Erwin, Tenn., when he was 16 to join the Air Corps. Family said he lied about his age and enlisted simply because he was hungry. He was a child of the Great Depression and, in a family of nine children, food was sparse. In the Air Corps, he was guaranteed meals, clothes and a roof over his head.
"He didn't like to talk about (the attack on Pearl Harbor) a bunch," Folden said. "It wasn't something he wanted to remember."
The military strike of the U.S. Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by the Imperial Japanese Navy came as a complete surprise and later resulted in the United States becoming involved in World War II.
"All they could do was find some place to hide. The bombers were flying so low, Daddy said he remembered seeing the Japanese pilots grinning at him," Folden said.
Simmons was honorably discharged from the Air Corps 17th Squadron in 1945.
He returned to his hometown and enrolled at Milligan College, where he received his bachelor's degree. He played on the college's first football team. After receiving his master's, he worked for the state of Virginia as an environmentalist.
He and his wife, Jean, would have been married for 59 years on Christmas Day.
"He was actually on his way to Knoxville (Tenn.) to marry another girl," Jean said. "My friends wanted to go see a ball game. I wasn't interested in the game, but I had a car so my friends wanted me to take them. My friends knew Henry. We ended up sitting together in the group and went out to dinner later that night."
Said daughter Becky Magee, "She went home that night, woke up her parents and said she met the man she was going to marry."
The family said Simmons will be remembered for his sense of humor.
"He kept us in stitches," Jean said.
The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that today there are 2.5 million surviving World War II veterans.
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