Simmons to Serve as Homecoming Grand Marshall

 Third generation Ashdown Panther Susan Simmons will serve as Grand Marshall of the 2009 Ashdown High School Homecoming ceremonies on Friday, Oct. 2.  Simmons will lead the Homecoming Parade after the 1:00 pep rally at Dick Hays Stadium and then crown the 2009 AHS Homecoming Queen during the 6:45 p.m. coronation ceremonies preceding the Ashdown-Arkadelphia football game at 7:30.

Simmons retired from the Ashdown School District in 2008 after 40 years of service to the district, which includes five years in the classroom, sixteen years at the Parent Center, and nineteen years as a volunteer and leader.

Simmons, a 1963 graduate of Ashdown High School and maid on the 1963 AHS Homecoming court, attended all twelve years of her public schooling in the Ashdown School District, as did her grandmother Ora Lee Erwin Setliff and her parents James and Thelma Sellers Setliff, who all attended classes in the Old Burke Street School.  “I often wondered,” Simmons stated, “if my grandmother sat in the same seat I did.”  Simmons tells that the wind-up clock hanging in her living room was salvaged by her grandfather Henry Setliff, who worked for the school when the old building was torn down.

Simmons credits her fifth grade teacher for inspiring her to be a teacher.   That teacher was Mrs. Margaret Daniel, who continues to be the inspiration for Simmons as well as for many others who know her.

Another well known mentor and inspiration for many in addition to Susan was former Ashdown coach and teacher Helen Parker.  “I was privileged,” Simmons states, “to play basketball under Helen Parker.”  Simmons says that Coach Parker taught her and all her students to “have pride in my school and community” and that “what we did was a reflection on our school and town.”

After high school, Simmons attended Harding University, where she met and married Bob Simmons.  She earned a degree in Elementary Education and taught in Des Arc and Texarkana before she and Bob, a math teacher, returned to Ashdown to teach.  Susan taught fifth grade at Burke Street Elementary from 1968-70, stayed home for a while with a new baby, returned to teach fourth grade math from 1974 to 1976,  and then left teaching temporarily to raise their three children, Scott (AHS Class of 1989), Amy (AHS Class of 1992), and Jason (AHS Class of 1996).  Bob was the AHS math teacher from 1967-81 before going to Nekoosa paper mill.

Constantly working with volunteer organizations such as PTA and Booster clubs, Susan stayed connected with the school district.  When she returned to teaching, taking a Title I reading teacher position at the junior high in 1991, some people never “realized I had not been teaching for 15 years” because “I was just always there where my children were.”

In 1992, Simmons had the opportunity to start the Parent Center and teach parent education for the district.  From 1992-2008, she worked at the center, developing community support programs and establishing a link between the school and the community. 

As a director at the Parent Center, Simmons served on state committees and lectured at state Parent Involvement and Preschool Conferences.  “I was even privileged,” she states, “to make a presentation about the Ashdown program at Yale University.” 

Before retiring in 2008, Simmons was instrumental in the establishment of the Ashdown Alumni Association.  She met with a few alumni who were equally interested and together they set up the first Alumni Dinner in 2007.  Four hundred alumni bought tickets and became Alumni Association charter members that first year, and 500 tickets were sold the next year.  The Alumni Dinner on Oct. 3 will be the third event and already the amount of seating has been expanded again.  “People fly in or drive from all over the United States,” declares Simmons, who has served as president of the Association for the past three years.  “One interesting note is that only half of the people who attend on any given year will be able to come the next year.”  That means that large numbers of new attendees are coming each year.

Simmons is also a charter member and vice-president of Delta Kappa Gamma, secretary of the Little River County Retired Teachers, a member of the Little River County Library Board, and preschool Sunday School teacher at Ashdown Church of Christ.

Since retirement, Simmons has enjoyed spending her time with community projects and attending programs and events involving her nine grandchildren, some of whom will become fifth generation “Panthers.”

“Working with Ashdown Schools has been a very exciting time in my life,”  she says, “and all the families I have met have been so precious to me.”