Isabel Simmons is proud to have lived a long, rewarding and fulfilling life.
Her memories of all the international traveling she’s done and during her 30-year career as a nurse are countless, times that brought her joy and adventure as she prepares to turn 101 years old.
Simmons, who lives at Junction Creek Health and Rehabilitation Center in Durango, will celebrate the big milestone on Aug. 31.
Originally from northern Scotland, she was an avid walker, ate healthy, traveled different parts of the world and had a long, impactful career as a nurse.
She did plenty of hiking in Switzerland and Austria, and she even visited France, Italy, India and Haiti. Much of her international travels came when she started her nursing training in Glasgow, Scotland, and continued in London. She moved to the United States in 1957 to continue her nursing career, and that passion for seeing the world continued after starting a family.
“I liked other people, and I didn’t mind (the change),” she said of moving to the U.S., adding she was happy with her work.
Having an “open mind” for adventure was passed down to her three now-grown children, Charles, Isabel and Ian, while raising them in Fort Lee, New Jersey, all while working at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in nearby Manhattan, New York.
Simmons said she liked being a nurse because it was important to her to help people, and she thrived at helping doctors in pre-surgery settings.
Simmons, who retired from nursing in 1987, helped children who had brain tumors and later worked as a midwife. Growing up, Ian Simmons said is mother was a “tough, stern kind of nurse,” adding that she taught him how to take someone’s blood pressure and to treat wounds.
“She was an independent, career-minded person,” he said.
Simmons, who lived in New Jersey for over a half-century, also liked seeing all the tall buildings and people in New York City.
Although she grew tired of commuting to and from Manhattan, leading her to call it a career, her love of traveling continued.
“I think we all got the traveling bug from mom,” Ian, 59, said.
The younger son left New Jersey for California in 1983 before making his way to Seattle to continue school and begin Peace Corps work in South America, carrying on his mother’s passion for travel. He ended up in Albuquerque in 2000 after finishing a two-year stretch in the Peace Corps, then moved to Durango in 2008 where he’s lived ever since. He helped his mother move to Durango on Mother’s Day 2021.
Aside from spending her remaining years close to her son, Simmons said she likes the outdoors, “different” trees and blue skies of Colorado – the latest of the fond memories she’s taken in throughout the last century.
mhollinshead@durangoherald.com
