Gwendolyn Walker Simmons died Jan. 20, 2025, following a long struggle with Alzheimer’s Disease. She was 87.
A lifelong resident of Rockingham County, N.C., Gwen spent the last 21 years of her life in Georgia, where she relocated in 2004 to help care for her first grandchildren. While she initially planned to stay a year in Georgia, it was soon clear she would not return to N.C. for more than visits, often with at least one grandchild in tow.
She remained close to family and longtime friends through frequent calls and letters, time spent together in Reidsville, Greensboro and Raleigh N.C., the mountains of North Carolina and North Litchfield Beach, S.C. She continued to help organize and attend fall reunions of the Reidsville High School Class of 1956, through the 60th reunion in 2016.
A cheerleader at RHS, Gwen was voted most popular in her graduating class. Following high school graduation, she attended Women’s College, later UNC-Greensboro, for a year of business classes. Upon returning to Reidsville, she began a job with Duke Power where she met her future husband, Preston Eugene Simmons. They married in 1960 and had their first child, a girl, in 1962. Gwen was a stay-at-home mother with parttime work as a bookkeeper until she had a second child, a son, in 1970.
Several years later, after both children were in school, she returned to the workforce as a parttime secretary for the Merricks Agency, an insurance business owned by a former RHS classmate and longtime friend, and later as secretary for Calvary Baptist Church in Wentworth.
As her children grew older and more independent, Gwen began expanding her community involvement, joining the Reidsville Women’s Club, where she served a term as president. She was an active member of First Baptist Church, and over the years kept the nursery occasionally during Sunday morning services, taught children’s Sunday school and Vacation Bible School, participated in the adult handbell choir, and even helped sew matching jumpsuits and scarves for girls in youth choir. She was among the first women selected to serve as a deacon at First Baptist Church.
Her husband, also a deacon, would frequently comment that she “was at that church every time the doors opened.”
Gwen dreamed of being able to travel and found that opportunity once her children had graduated from college. In May 1993, she traveled to Europe with her son David, who had just graduated, and visited a half dozen countries. In the following years, she traveled throughout the U.S. and Canada, visiting the Southwest; Pacific Northwest; New England; Alaska; New Foundland and Nova Scotia; Edmonton and Alberta.
At age 60 she went snow skiing for the first time, joining a YMCA trip to the N.C. mountains. She made it home unscathed and went back several times before deciding she had tempted fate enough.
Nothing commanded her attention more than her four grandchildren and she often acted more like a playmate, joining them on the trampoline, in the rough surf of the ocean, on the floor pushing toy trucks, cars and many trains.
She was first diagnosed with a mild cognitive impairment in 2007 at age 69. A year later she was told she was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease.
She passed away peacefully in her sleep at 2:20 a.m. on Jan. 20, 2025.
She is survived by a daughter, Kelly (Scott Michaux) and son David (Sara Wirtz); four grandchildren, Zhenia Michaux, Broc Michaux, Ethan Simmons and Audrey Simmons; a great-grandson, Alexey Michaux; a brother, Nat Walker (Linda); and nephews Tommy Walker and Jonathan Walker.
She was preceded in death by her husband, Preston Simmons, and infant daughter Heather Elaine Simmons; mother, Ruth Thacker Walker; father, William Sidney Walker; and sister Mary Ann Walker, age 3.
A longtime organ donor, Gwen would be pleased to know that her brain is now part of the fight to end Alzheimer’s at the University of Miami, courtesy of the national Brain Donor Project, which partners with researchers to provide organs and tissue to use in the search for a cause and cure for diseases affecting the brain. In lieu of flowers or cards, we invite you to give to that organization, https://braindonorproject.org, or to Compassionate Care Hospice in Athens, Ga., www.amedisys.com/services/hospice-care/donations, or to First Baptist Church in Reidsville, https://fbcreidsville.com/give.
###
