GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Ella Mary Sims was born in a sharecropper’s cabin in the Mississippi Delta and overcame adversity and tragedy early in life to become a leading advocate for justice and equality in the Grand Rapids community.
A wide circle of family and friends are mourning the death of Sims, 89, who died Jan. 23, 2013.
A mother of 10, Sims was known as an outspoken, hard-working community activist and a woman of deep faith.
"It's hard to imagine, as active as she was in the community, that she was such a wonderful woman and mother and grandmother," said Veruynca Williams, a longtime friend. "I knew her as a Christian woman of faith."
"We don't know how she did it," said her daughter Mary Jayne Sims. "I can't remember a time when it felt like she wasn't physically present for me or emotionally present. In talking to her, you felt like you were the special person – you were the one."
Sims funeral was Saturday, Feb. 2, at True Light Baptist Church, and a community memorial was held the night before. Both drew great crowds, Williams said.
“And it was not because she died,” she said. “It was because she lived.”
Among her many honors, Sims in 2005 received the Giant Among Giants award.
Sims was the daughter of a Baptist preacher, born on Christmas Eve 1923 in a sharecropper’s cabin near Sumner, Miss. In her early days, she went to school only from December to February and picked cotton the rest of the year.
She went to high school in Helena, Ark. At 17, she married Willie Scaife. When she was 22 and the mother of an infant, her husband died after he was hospitalized for an ear infection.
"It was just a little Jim Crow hospital with one wing for black people," Sims told The Grand Rapids Press in 1978. "I remember thinking, 'Here I am, 22, with a 7-week-old baby, and my life is finished.'"
After moving to Grand Rapids, she met Clyde Sims at an American Legion Hall in 1947. It was his birthday.
“It was like a birthday gift to him,” Williams said. “And she was a gift to our community.”
The couple married and had nine more children.
“She was an excellent cook and well known for her delicious sweet potato pies, German chocolate cakes and specialty hamburgers,” Williams said. “She could make a meal from little, and everyone would be filled.”
Ella Mary Sims received the Giant Among Giants award in 2005.
When her children were young adults, Sims went to college and earned her bachelor’s degree at Aquinas College. She served as the college’s director of minority student affairs. She received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Aquinas in 2001.
She volunteered with a wide range of organizations as she worked to make the community a more just and welcoming place for everyone. She worked with the NAACP, YWCA, the Family Outreach Center, the Salvation Army and the Michigan League of Human Services, in addition to a number of state and national organizations. Sims also was a longtime member of True Light Baptist Church.
She helped establish the YWCA’s Women’s Resource Center in 1973 and she was honored with the center’s “E” Quality Award in 2002.
She broke ground as the first woman of color to be a columnist for The Grand Rapids Press.
Serving on the Salvation Army's advisory board, Sims was instrumental in fundraising and planning for the Ray and Joan Kroc Community Center.
Her activism dated back to the 1950s, when she fought for federal funds to build Campau Commons, a public housing project. Her work led to a job with Kent County Community Action Programs, in which she advocated on behalf of the poor.
Sims was preceded in death by her husband, Clyde Sims, who died in 1983, and by her son Willie Scaife Jr.
She is survived by seven sons: James (Myra) Scaife, Clyde Sims Jr., William (Deborah) Sims, Donald K. Sims, Stedford (Hazel) Sims, John Wesley, Mark (Tracy) Sims of Calgary, Canada; two daughters: Mary Jayne Sims of Oakland, CA and Yolanda (Darian) Vaughn of Atlanta, Georgia; 32 grandchildren; 85 great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren
In an obituary for Sims’ funeral, Williams described her as “huge in character and personality.”
“She created a brilliant mosaic legacy of memories rooted in generosity, selflessness, and unending faith that will remain alive forever through those who follow her.”
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