Verne Simmons Embodies The Spirit Of St. Paul Johnson
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Verne Simmons is there for the kids every day at St. Paul's Johnson High School, even when he is dealing with personal tragedy.
"You can't help but be around kids and feel young, or trying to keep up with them," Simmons said.
He is the police officer on site at the school, and that means he spends much of his time with students.
"The students love him because he's a person of authority that they can trust and believe in, so they talk to him about everyday things as well as school things," Assistant Principal Steve Taylor said. "Trust is definitely the key word with Verne."
Simmons says you have to know everything about the students.
"You get to know the kids here, they get to know you and you build this relationship," Simmons said. "And it's not built in one day [laughs]."
Principal Michael Thompson says Simmons is very important to the school.
"He's a very calming influence, he has a lot of history with this neighborhood, knows how to talk to kids and staff, kind of brings us all together," Thompson said. "He's got really high standards, but he enforces them just very calmly."
This spring will be his last in this capacity, as he has decided to retire from the role. But he is not retiring from his other job at Johnson – the head basketball coach. He turned the program over the past 15 years with a simple philosophy.
"Being small-town basketball, you know. I think the thing that you first do is you stress community," Simmons said. "And being part of community is to create identity."
What he loves about this program is what he loves about being a police officer in the school.
"The relationship with the kids. It's more than basketball," Simmons said. "First of all, basketball has been so good to me."
His team became even more important to him this winter, when he lost his teammate. He had been together with his wife, Tracy, since they were 19-years-old. She died of breast cancer before Christmas.
"You know, she was a fighter," he said. "She fought all the way to the end there. You talk to the kids and that's what they'll say about her."
He has been blessed with the Johnson community.
"We were there for him," Taylor said.
And he has chosen to approach the grieving more like a coach, trying as best anyone can to move forward.
"That's all you really can do. And we stress that every year with our seniors," Simmons said. "If they've made it through the season, they've played, you know, their last game and now we talk to them about, 'Alright, now we have to make that next step.'"
This is his therapy, perhaps; trying to help students and athletes; concerned most at this school about what so many are concerned about these days.
"What scares me the most is the social media [laughs]," he said. "With social media, you don't have to be in a room with a person in order to, you know, make something happen."
Knowing that as he leaves and he deals with his own tragedy; that he has been a man of service; that what he has done is simply what he was put here to do.
"This is my way of doing the same thing. I wouldn't be here if there wasn't guys that helped me … and so this is my way of giving back," Simmons said.
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