From time to time, we will be publishing stories that were run in prior publications throughout the last two and a half years of the Howe Enterprise.
From Volumes 52, Edition 9 and 10, July 21 and 28, 2014
The love affair that exists between Howe and Steve Simmons is almost too much to explain in words. It’s hard to imagine anyone coming through Howe at any point in the city’s history that has made a bigger impact on both youth and adults the way that Simmons has. The adoration can be seen when a child is even remotely near him. Howe has never been the same since he arrived in 1987.
Simmons grew up a Bulldog fan. A Georgia Bulldog fan that is. He was born in Jacksonville, Florida because that’s where his father was stationed while in the US Navy. However, both of his parents (Ralph and Katie) are originally from Georgia, as well as his grandparents, greatgrandparents and greatgreat grandparents.
“Georgia is our native state and when I was about one year old, my parents moved back to Griffin, Georgia, which was their hometown. And I grew up in Griffin until I was five.” said Simmons. His father, after his time in the Navy, became a police officer. But halfway through kindergarten in 1960, his father took a job in Atlanta at the Chevrolet plant as a security guard. Simmons entered Cleveland Avenue Elementary School and his family started attending Cleveland Avenue Baptist Church, which was across the street. During that time, the family adopted two girls (Lori and Kerin) which became sisters to young Steve Simmons and father Ralph finally had the family that he longed for.
But while Steve was in the seventh grade, his father Ralph heard to calling to become a pastor.
“It was a strong commitment. He left his childhood and lifetime dream of having a family and a great house, great neighborhood and he gave it all up because he felt the call to preach.” Simmons said. “My dad is a man that is made out of rock. He has a heart that is unbelievable.”
Although, Ralph Simmons is now 81 and has a hard time walking, when his son called him last week, he was on a ladder painting the house.
“He never stops. He’s as tough as nails.” said Simmons. “He and my mom held the family on their shoulders.”
The Simmons family moved to Fort Worth, Texas so Ralph could attend Southwest Baptist Seminary School.
“We lived on faith because that’s all we could live on. My dad’s biggest concern in life was taking care of his family.” said Simmons.
All throughout these childhood years, it was football that Steve Simmons was most passionate about. Still in Georgia, his friend and father were Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket fans and used to take him to the annual Georgia vs. Georgia Tech game. As a young kid, he’d cheer for the Yellow Jackets because that’s who they cheered for. But around the age of 10, he decided that he liked the Georgia Bulldogs more than the Yellow Jackets.
“I liked the way they played football. That day, they didn’t know it, but my heart was cheering for the team in red.” said Simmons. “I played 2nd grade organized little league football and I played a million back yard, back alley football games around the house. Where I grew up, football was it. When I got to Atlanta, even at six years-old, I didn’t know what football was, but when the older kids were out there kicking the ball and running around, I knew that this was for me.” said Simmons. “I got beat up a lot in the neighborhood because I was the runt.”
Simmons continued to play football in the sixth and seventh grade. Upon moving to Fort Worth, Ralph Simmons’ biggest concern was how he was going to support his family. Steve Simmons’ biggest concern was playing football. And soon, he found himself in a culture shock. It was 1968, at the age of 13, the young people were changing their dress style and hair styles. However, Simmons was still held to the traditional American boy standards. He had his hair cut once per week, while his friends had a hair cut once per year.
Simmons went out for the huge football program at Rosemont Junior High and never played a down in a game. He was heartbroken. The following year he was headed to Paschal High School and the spring before, they called all of the kids to the cafeteria that were interested in playing football the following season. Upon his arrival to the cafeteria some of the kids gave him a hard time about trying to play.
“I was hotter than a coal in a grill. I was mad. But I was also scared because I was going to go through this again of being on a team and not getting to play. I wanted to play football.” said Simmons.
Due to circumstances, he did get to play football. That summer, Ralph Simmons finished seminary and took the pastor position at the Baptist Church in Verona, Texas which was located between Princeton and Blue Ridge. The family moved there and this put Steve Simmons in Blue Ridge High School. He was excited about two things: the opportunity to play football and the ability to shoot his 14 shotgun anytime he wanted.
Blue Ridge played eight-man football at that time and Simmons’ first question was if everyone got to practice because it was a good day if he was able to even go in and practice in Fort Worth. Thankfully for Simmons, Blue Ridge was a long way from “Cowtown.” Everyone practiced and everyone played.
Not knowing anyone and not being overly athletic, Simmons had one thing that kept him around. His heart. However, he had no idea what he was in store for. With a new coach at Blue Ridge just out of college, they worked out for two weeks in shorts and t-shirts. They ran and did agility drills. Simmons stood in the shadows only doing what they asked him to do. But he had never been asked to do that much.
“The very next morning after the second day, when I went to get out of bed, I never felt pain like that.” Simmons said. “I didn’t break my football shoes in so they started breaking me in. I had blisters on my heels the size of a quarter. I did not know this side of football. I didn’t know that kind of pain.”
Every morning, he felt like he was not able to get out of bed. Several players started to quit. Several older players started mocking a certain player that quit and then one of them said, ‘I wonder when that Simmons kid is going to quit. He’s awful.’ Simmons wanted to find a hole and crawl in it and cover up like he wasn’t there. They boys didn’t even realize that he overheard this, but it pierced him through the heart. Now, not only is his body killing him, but he had those words in his mind.
Going through drills, the thought of quitting started to sit in with him. But while running out for a pass and making the catch, one of the players who had just said those words that pierced him, said, ‘good job Steve.’ That simple encouragement helped Simmons to stay with it.
It was an encounter with his father Ralph though that kept his feet to the fire also. During the first week when he thought pain could not hit a higher threshold, he was sitting outside at the picnic table about to have dinner.
“It was just me and my dad and I was thinking, ‘how am I going to tell him that I’m going to quit.’ I thought that maybe if I tell him of everyone who’s quit so far that he’ll kind of understand. I said, ‘well another boy quit today.’ said Simmons.
Abruptly and promptly before he could get the words out of his mouth, Ralph Simmons firmly said, ‘Are you gonna quit?’ Steve Simmons response was a quick, ‘no sir.’ With that, his fate was sealed and quitting became a non-option.
With his dad’s intolerance for quitting and the encouragement he received from his teammate, Simmons began to realize that he could do it.
“Positive words can make such a difference in people’s lives positively. And a negative word can do the same negative thing destructively.” said Simmons.
Out of the twelve freshman, Simmons was the only one that didn’t quit.
“Once I got over the pain threshold and the muscles stopped hurting and the blisters healed up, it was time to play football and and every once in awhile they’d put me in and now I’m playing football and I got over the hump because of two things: my dad and a fellow Tiger that gave a word of encouragement.” said Simmons.
The following year, Simmons was a starting guard and linebacker as a sophomore on an undefeated Blue Ridge team that went to regionals. But soon after the season, once again, he was on the move.
His father had the desire to get involved with evangelism and moved the family back to Griffin, Georgia, their hometown. That meant that Steve entered the large 5A Griffin High School where his father graduated from. Which also meant that he would enter spring football practice. He played linebacker and did well in the spring and was looking forward to playing for a big school. However, once again, the Simmons family was on the move and headed back to Blue Ridge even though his father didn’t have a church to pastor.
“When my dad didn’t have a church, he always had a job. It would be a labor job. He did whatever he had to do to take care of the family. And that set a strong impression on me. He had a degree from Southwestern Seminary, he was a pastor, buy my dad was never, never too big to accept digging or doing whatever he had to do physically to provide for our family and he did and he’s an amazing man. My mom was the backbone of the house and we had a true family.” said Simmons.
After Simmons’ junior year, his father took the position of pastor in Anna, Texas and Steve found himself once again in a new school and in a new football program.
“Once I got around the Anna kids, I really hit it off with them. I was real excited about their mindset about football.” said Simmons.
Upon redistricting, Anna was being put in the district with Celina, which was the defending undefeated regional champions. It was Celina’s 5th regional championship in six years (only missing 1970 because Howe won it). It was also the first year that a Class B school was going to be eligible to win a state championship and that also excited Simmons, although Celina was picked to win it.
Celina might have been picked to win, but Anna had so much confidence that they could beat them. The confidence of the Anna Coyotes engulfed Simmons’ appetite to be a part of it. As it turns out, those Coyotes did beat Celina 14-13 and it was Celina’s only loss of the season.
“It was a barn burner. It was a black and blue, knock you down, knock you down again, head smashing football game. It might as well been the state championship because our playoff run was so short.” said Simmons.
The Coyotes were beat in the first round by Windthorst, who eventually played in the state championship a few weeks later.
It was that year in Anna where he had the coach that influenced him the most.
“Hal Porter was his name and he was an amazing man.” Simmons said. “Outside of my dad, he’s the next one on the list.”
Porter made a powerful impression on many of the young men in Anna. Interestingly enough, Simmons never had the same coach, even assistant, two consecutive years.
“Of all of those coaches I ever had and would later have, Coach Porter was the only one that looked me in the eyes and said, I love you.” said Simmons. “He truly meant it and he truly cared about us. He was a special person.”
Coach Porter passed in June of 2011 due to heart complications. It was shortly after retiring from Cisco and turning their program around.
In the spring of Simmons’ senior year, he attended a tryout for Ranger Junior College with 200 kids going through hitting and grinding drills. That summer, Simmons received a phone call and the head coach offered him a partial scholarship to play football at Ranger.
“I was on cloud nine and I said yes sir, I will be there as soon as I can get there.” said Simmons.
Arriving at the school and completing paperwork and enrolling in the school, Simmons received a phone call from Coach Porter (who had taken a job in Goliad, Texas. He and Keith Stephens (former quarterback at Anna) had been asked to meet the coaches at McMurry College. After meeting the coaches, they asked if the two could attend workouts the following day. Keith, who was about to join the Navy and Simmons, who was about to start playing for Ranger decided to stay and play for McMurry. The two went to see Coach Porter for the weekend and didn’t come home.
“We just called our parents and said, ‘we’re going to stay here and go out for the football team.’ We borrowed clothes, we had no sheets on our bed in our dorm or anything.” said Simmons.
Most freshman, once top dogs at their high school, couldn’t handle the role as reserves. However, Simmons was able to tolerate it more because of his experiences of having to play the role as reserve while maturing in to a starter.
“I didn’t expect to start and I didn’t even expect to play. I just wanted to get in the program, get on the team and work my way up.” said Simmons.
Simmons did get to play on special teams in his freshman year, however. In his sophomore year, he and six other teammates called themselves “The Ducks.” Five of them were starters and one rotated out with a starter. They were always on the field and that left one odd duck. Simmons became frustrated and admittedly started to get a bad attitude about not playing.
“I was mad because I thought I should’ve been out there. That’s the wrong way to take it. I messed up because it just made me worse. It wasn’t a good year. I did too much pouting and not enough work.” said Simmons.
His junior year, he made up his mind that he was going to have a good attitude and whether he played much was going to be up to the coaches and out of his control. He didn’t play in any varsity games and received a deep thigh bruise and missed the last five games. But that wasn’t the only problem that had crept up on Simmons. His grades and personal life were beginning to get out of hand.
“When I was six-years old, I was at a revival meeting in Atlanta. During the invitation, my mom bent over to me and said, Steve do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only begotten Son of God? I said, yes ma’am. She said do you believe that he died for your sins and rose from the grave and lives forever? I said, yes ma’am. Do you want to ask him into your heart to be your savior? I said, yes ma’am. She said, go tell Brother Gibson what you just told me. I stepped up and took the preachers hand and told him. That night is when Christ came into my heart. All my life growing up, I’m as human as anyone else on this planet, but Jesus Christ has been in my heart and soul since that moment.” said Simmons.
Simmons went to college as a Christian and didn’t want certain things in his lifestyle. He fought the battle in high school, but started losing some of that battle towards the end of high school.
“College is a tough battle field for a Christian.” said Simmons. “The only thing I went in to that battle with was my faith. For the first couple of years of college, I was straying. I was not in line with God. Everything was a struggle. I was failing everywhere, football, grades, and personal life.”
His father Ralph had taken a job in Washington state and his family was 2,000 miles away. That, with other things had teammates asking about his well-being. Simmons realized that he had stopped praying and attending church.
“I believed, but I wasn’t sharpening my sword. I wasn’t even carrying a sword.” said Simmons.
After Christmas break, he found a spot towards the roof of the dorm and he made that his spot to get on his knees and did so daily. He started to attend church and get involved with Bible studies.
“The one thing I can tell you is that I was putting God first for the first time since college. All of sudden, my personal life was like it was supposed to be. I started making grades that even my friends were amazed at. I began to work out before and after football practice, either running or lifting weights.” said Simmons.
The coaches began to take notice of his much improved work ethic and his senior year, he found himself playing linebacker. He even got a trophy for most tackles in a game.
“When I look at that little trophy, I think, I didn’t quit. When I wanted to tell my dad.. When I was in college and so depressed… I didn’t quit. And I plugged in God where I was supposed to and finally made a significant contribution.” said Simmons.
Simmons had to go an extra year at McMurry to get his degree because of his poor grades at the first. But that’s when he met Doreen.
“I had to go an extra year in college to get my degree because of my poor grades at first. But my fifth year, I got my greatest thing in my life, my wife.” Simmons said while holding back emotions. “If I ever had a fantasy of playing for Bear Bryant at The University of Alabama, or play for The University of Georgia or wherever my fantasy goes, I’ve got to meet Doreen, wherever it is. It would’ve been cool to play at Alabama, as long as I met Doreen. I would be cool to do a lot of things in life, but as long as I met Doreen.”
Simmons said that he loved his experiences at McMurry State because of the friends that he made and the experiences that he had, but at the top of the list was Doreen.
“She’s my wife. Doreen is a queen to me. I look at her and I think, she’s a legend.” Simmons said.
Going through the dating scene at college, Simmons became discouraged because he never thought he’d find that true one that he could connect with and be in love with.
Before Simmons’ first year, after recycling through another poor relationship, he decided that he was through dating. But then he kept noticing this girl in the cafeteria. After seeing her in several different locations on campus, he realized that he was really attracted to her. But, after pledging to himself that he wasn’t going to date, he kept seeing Doreen.
As it turns out, the kicker on the football team was friends with Doreen’s friend. In October, they were walking around the athletic dorm, and the two girls were nearby. Simmons said something to the kicker about Doreen and he quickly introduced them. And that is the first official meeting of Steve Simmons and Doreen Villa.
“I was talking to her just later in the lobby of the dorm. I had to walk to my room and when I came out, she was walking out. I thought to myself, well, I guess I didn’t impress her.” said Simmons.
But later at a football game, Simmons saw her in the stands and they exchanged a smile and a wave. It was that night, that changed their lives.
There was a dance that night and Simmons, instead, went to eat with some friends at The Buffalo Gap. Afterwards, he went to his dorm and got in bed. He then looked at the clock on the wall that read 9 pm and wondered why he wasn’t out on a Saturday night as a college student.
“I got up and got dressed and thought, maybe I’ll see Doreen.” Simmons said. “When I walked up there in the dark, I could see a silhouette of two girls walking towards me. It looked like Doreen was one. I walked straight to her. Her friend left and Doreen and I went to the football field and sat and talked for the first time.”
But the interesting part of the story is that Doreen went to the dance thinking she would see Simmons. The girls were leaving and going out of the side door but changed to the front door because they she saw the silhouette of a male and female coming through the main door and Doreen thought it might have been Simmons with another girl. As it turned out, by turning, they walked directly to Simmons, who was walking in to try and find her.
“I know the hand of The Lord was in this.” said Simmons. “When we met, we should’ve just got married that night. I was so in love, just like I am right now.” said Simmons.
After that October initial meeting, they were married the following July of 1978 in Verona Baptist Church where Simmons’ father Ralph first preached. The entire family came from Georgia by way of Ralph Simmons driving to get them. After a brief stay at the Ramada Inn in Sherman, they remainder of the honeymoon was spent driving the family back to Georgia.
Simmons and his new bride had to scurry home from Georgia beacuse he was just hired in his first coaching job at Van Alstyne. The 23 year-old Simmons was hired to coach the junior high in every sport.
“That first day of school in junior high, when I pulled up and parked, I had butterflies in my stomach like you wouldn’t believe. I was now the teacher and coach.” said Simmons. Simmons was intolerable of the loudness of junior high students.
“They didn’t know how to be quiet. They were talking and yaking. Finally I had to get on to them and mad at them and upset with them. We were at ends with each other. I’m thinking, how do I get these kids to quit talking? The noise level is like you’re in a hanger and there are thirteen Osprey Helicopters in there.” said Simmons as he mimicked the sound.
The spiritual warfare in college turned in to the classroom warfare at Van Alstyne. At the first practice with approximately 50 athletes in 7th and 8th grade football. As little cartoon characters, they all were all asking what to do over and over. Simmons, clearly overwhelmed, looked at them and simply said, “I don’t know.”
“I looked at them and thought, I hadn’t planned one thing. I finally got them in lines and stretched.” said Simmons. “Finally, I adapted and they adapted and all of a sudden we had a great year. I got as close to those kids as you can imagine and they got close to me. I was excited about the next year.”
However, just as Ralph Simmons moved his family, so did young Steve. He was given the position of defensive coordinator at Chillicothe High School, which wa a 1A school.
The only drawback to this was that he was teaching 4th, 5th and 6th grade science. “I’m a history major. I’m as far from science as Pluto is from the Sun. said Simmons. It was only to be for one year and then they’d hire a science teacher. Simmons stayed there for three years and was later offered the head coaching position, however, he wanted to return to North Texas.
Celina’s head coach Joe Stubblefield ended up hiring Simmons for the 1984 school year. The Bobcats were coming off of one of their worst years by only winning one game in ’83. The facilities were in terrible shape and much different than the Celina we all know today.
Simmons’ first year was a junior high coach and varsity assistant. He progressed over his five year stay at Celina to the junior varsity head coach and varsity running backs coach.
“And that’s when I coached Anthony Lynn.” said Simmons. He was my tailback in 8th grade during my first year there. As he went through high school, Anthony was powerful. That was one great running back.”
Lynn was on schedule to be one of the most dynamic backs in Texas high school football history, but suffered a broken ankle his senior year. Still, Lynn went on to play college football for Texas Tech and even in the NFL for the Denver Broncos.
It was early in his time at Celina that Simmons decided on an event that would change him forever. With the desire to still be physically active and still filled with energy even after his playing days had passed, at 29 years old, he decided to join the US Marines.
Simmons grew up with the Vietnam war and later related to leadership of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980’s.
“I was telling the kids about serving their country and I thought to myself, you need to do something. You need to serve. You told the kids to do it. You need to do it.” said Simmons. “Even as a child, I wanted to be a Marine.
Simmons went home for lunch and told Doreen to call the Marine Corps recruiter. She gave him a look that he will never forget. He again, told her to call. After she made an appointment, Gunnery Sergeant Wilson and Sergeant Rowens met with him and had Simmons fired up. The cut-off age was 28 to join the Marine Corps, however, they filed for an age waiver, which was granted.
With a two-year old son and a new comfortable reclyner, Simmons got in his car after his last class and drove to Griffin, Georgia with his family who would stay with his parents while he flew from Atlanta to Charleston, South Carolina for boot camp at Parris Island.
“I was charged up, fired up and I got on that jet and it was like my first day of football at Blue Ridge. I looked at Doreen and Paul and I thought, how am I going to leave them? I couldn’t stand the thought of leaving them.” said Simmons.
Simmons then realized what he had done and became nervous. He wasn’t even able to eat at the airport. Upon arriving at Charleston, they were welcomed and given a red-carpet type of treatment, but once they left Charleston, the nice guy stuff was over.
“We went through that front gate and I’m thinking, oh turn this bus around. Let me go home.” said Simmons.
While viewing the training ground from the bus, he realized how many people have trained there that have died on the battlefield. He had a morbid feeling that the place resembled a killing machine.
“This is about killing. This ain’t Boys Scout camp. This is the US Marines.” said Simmons.
The drill instructor got on the bus and Simmons explained that it was exactly like you see in the movies. The instructor said, when I say move, you get out of this bus and on those yellow footprints!
“You’d have thought it was Black Friday and they’d have just opened the doors at Wal-Mart.” Simmons laughed. “Once we jumped on those yellow footprints, we jumped on a roaring river headed straight towards the waterfall and for three months it was pounding and pounding and pounding.”
Simmons, even having been there for some time still could not eat. Jello was the only thing he could keep down during this painstaking period of his life.
He would get a letter from Doreen everyday in mail call. People started to take notice of the close relationship the married couple shared.
“Everyone was jealous that I got that letter everyday. My wife, she is legendary.” said Simmons.
The recruits spent two weeks at the rifle range and the expert would be privileged with a phone call to home. Simmons’ bulls-eye became that phone call to Doreen and he achieved that goal. Plus, they let him call her on their anniversary. After three gruesome months of training, he graduated with his family there in attendance. Son Paul had turned three that summer.
After achieving the highest score of the platoon in shooting, he was out in front during graduation.
“It felt good to get to be out front, but it felt better to leave.” said Simmons. “When I got in that car and daddy drove over that bridge, I told him to stop. I got out on that bridge and I looked back at that island and I told Doreen to take a picture of me looking back at it. That was 90 days of the greatest challenge of my life.”
It was then that he once again heard his father in his head saying, “you gonna quit?” No sir. He then thought of his mom asking him if he wanted to ask Jesus into his heart? Yes ma’am. “Everyday in that boot camp I was praying. My dad and my Lord got me through that thing.” said Simmons.
He came back to Celina trimming 37 pounds off of his energetic body and now weighed 168 pounds. Kids came running up to him and couldn’t believe the physical transformation that had taken place.
With boot camp squarely in the rearview mirror, it was time to get back to Celina. At the end of Simmons’ 5th year, Celina head coach Stubblefield took the principal position there and they hired a new head coach from the Houston area that indicated that he didn’t want Simmons on his staff. With that, he talked to G.A. Moore, who was coaching at Sherman at the time.
“It looked like I was going to Sherman. We bought a house in Sherman. It didn’t work out because the teaching field didn’t come open. But I felt real confident I’d get a job somewhere. I turned in my resignation and told the area coaches that I was looking.” Simmons said.
Mark McDaniel wanted him to come to Van Alstyne, but again, they couldn’t get the teaching position to open up. The coach at Whitesboro asked him to be his defensive coordinator, but they went with a different teacher. He talked to Howe head coach Jim Fryar, who was looking for an offensive line coach. Fryar, however, never contacted him back and it was in August of 1987 when Simmons was to sign a contract with Anna. But something didn’t seem right with his visit with the head coach at Anna because of the alumni factor. The head coach was worried if his close-knit relationship with the Anna community would affect his job.
“I told him it wouldn’t be a problem, but looking back, it might have.” said Simmons. “It’s not so much what I do; it’s what people do.”
Feeling uneasy about the interview, Simmons, however, felt that he couldn’t turn down the position late in the summer. Before signing the contract with Anna, he met an insurance salesman who wanted meet his friends. Simmons took him to Howe to meet the Bulldogs coaches.
“When I walked in to field house, Jim Fryar jumped up and said, ‘where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day.’ My heart liked to have exploded out of my chest I was so happy. I knew what he was going to say.” said Simmons.
With that, Simmons immediately agreed to coach at Howe. Jim Fryar and Billy Hill coached the varsity, while Simmons and Vernon Richardson coached the J.V. Simmons became close friends with Fryar and admired the way he handled the kids and the extra things that he and his wife Connie did for the football boys and cheerleaders to make it a unique environment. Fryar became excited to build a weight room at Bulldog Stadium because of the influence of Simmons. Fryar had it built just in time for the 1989 season.
The Bulldogs had their longest streak of successful football starting in 1984 and carrying through 1991 and Steve Simmons was there for five years of that period. For seven seasons with Howe, Simmons was a part of the varsity coaching staff under three head coaches, including Fryar, Joey McQueen and Terry Davis. It was Fryar, who asked him to go to Jacksboro with him when he took the athletic director position there. But, for Howe’s benefit, Simmons stayed.
The craziest thing about getting the Howe job to him was that he was going to be the elementary P.E. coach. He had taken an Elementary P.E. class in college and fussed about it because he knew that he was going to be a football coach, not an elementary coach. He visited with Kathy Mangrum, who was the elementary P.E. coach in Celina for some words of wisdom. They talked about ideas of how to handle the older kids, but as they started talking about the younger kids, Simmons knew he was in store for a challenge.
When I asked her if kindergarten were about the same as first graders, she looked at me like I was crazy.” Simmons said.
His first day at Howe in 1987, he was able to handle the third, fourth and fifth graders fairly well. But he was terrified of the kindergarten class that were coming after lunch.
“I walked in to that room and the teachers fled. They walked out quickly. I was all alone and felt like I was back at Van Alstyne all over again.” said Simmons.
With 75 kindergarten student and Simmons not even speaking the same language as some of the kids, Simmons quickly realized that kindergarten was an entire universe all to itself.
“I walked in to that room and it would’ve done me no good to say sit down, much less make seven lines like I did the older kids.” said Simmons.
In no time, he had seven kids lined up on the wall headed for the office. He still wonders how he was able to control any of the kids in that class on that first day.
“The boys were fighting and punching and grabbing each other and I thought, this ain’t going to work.” said Simmons.
He got in his truck after school and headed to the field house for football practice and thought that he might have to finish the year out and go somewhere else.
“Football was great, but this kindgarten – this ain’t gonna work.” said Simmons.
Simmons began to look at his text books from McMurry that he thankfully kept. He learned to organize them and control them through those books. One of the games was called “colors” and each kid would get a square color and if their color was called, they’d get to run around a circle. But this game ended up creating a legend out of Steve Simmons.
He began to tell the kids that he was a Marine. The fact that he was a soldier immediately got their attention.
“I stood there and they were all looking at me. All of them. I said, Simmons, don’t blow it. You got them. You better come up with something.” said Simmons.
Out of the imagination of a desperate coach came the story of the horsefly. He looked at them and told them that in the Marines, they say ATTEN-TION. And you stand straight, you don’t move. With all of the eyes fixated on Simmons, he told them that we stand straight and don’t move because we have discipline.
He told them a story of when he had to stand still at attention and a horsefly landed on his face. He said that he couldn’t move because he had…and the kids said discipline. They said it back to Simmons.
“I can still see Tonya McLain staring up at me. They were listening so intently.” said Simmons. He told the kids that the horsefly started biting him so hard on the cheek. But he didn’t move because he had discipline. He told the kids that fly kept biting so hard that Coach felt a little drop of blood dripping from his face.
After that story, he had them sitting straight with their hands on their knees. He told them that he was going to count to three and say discipline and would see who was sitting the straightest with their hands on their knees.
“1.2.3. Discipline. They all snapped to. Their backs went straight as a board. And when they did that, I said, GOT EM.” said Simmons.
1.2.3. Discipline was born from the horsefly story. And for years and years since, if he has needed to get the attention of students, that is how it has been done.
He also told that kindergarten class about the Honor Man in the Marines. He began to pick an honor student as a reward for their discipline and outstanding behavior. With that, the “H” was born.
But the most popular feature in Steve Simmons bag is simply, the chant. The kids chant that they’re highly motivated, truly dedicated, rough, tough, can’t get enough, Howe Bulldogs!
This was also born in Simmons’ first year at Howe. After already implementing the other marine tactics to control the kids, he thought they’d like it. He began to teach the third graders the chant in which was his Marine chant while in boot camp in Parris Island.
“They really liked it so I taught all of the kids the chant.” said Simmons.
At the end of the school year, Superintendent Pete Simmons wanted to hold an academic peprally for the school. It was supposed to be exactly like a football pep-rally with cheering and hollering.
Coach Simmons offered to have the kids do the chant at the pep-rally. Pete Simmons, having already heard the kids do it and was extremely impressed by it, gave the green light . During that pep rally, the kindergarten through fifth grade all did the chant simultaneously and goose bumps and chills came over the entire audience. It was the talk of the town. Pete Simmons said he wasn’t sure if he was more impressed with the chant or the fact that he was able to keep them quiet and in such order.
Simmons has been that inspirational leader throughout Howe from the time Jim Fryar told him he was trying to reach him all day. He’s started an H-Association with former Howe athletes. At one point, they were having an annual luncheon with all former football players. He constructed “Bulldog Hall” at Howe High School which displays the championship team photos along with standout player photos.
The little boy from Griffin, Georgia was destined to be a Bulldog. And when people think of Howe and the Howe Bulldogs, their first thought is probably of Steve Simmons. He can still be seen on Friday nights on the field waving the towel and trying to get the crowd fired up and involved in the game.
Some day, something in Howe will be named in his honor. Who knows when or where or what, but there will come a day. And when that day comes, he’ll think of his father asking him about quitting. He’ll think of his mother asking him if he believes in Christ. And he’ll be thinking of that girl that he calls legendary.
