The bow of the ship chugged up the wave like a roller coaster clicking up the track to the peak of its first drop. Cresting the top of the mountain-sized swell, the bow fell off, crashed into the trough and disappeared under the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Half of the crew locked themselves in their bunks, green and utterly useless.
John Simms, a young Navy seaman, made his way to the bridge of the ship, which escorted destroyers for 30-day stints. It was the late 1950s, and Simms was serving as a radarman, which appealed to his technological abilities. But his true superpower at the time was that he could avoid seasickness by understanding the dynamics of the storm and thinking his way through it. Mind over mal de mer.
“I understood what made you seasick, and I wouldn’t get sick, which kind of made me an odd man out,” says Simms, who is 84 and the founder of Simms Fishing Products in Bozeman, Montana. “My mind would tell my body it’s OK. I was able to convince myself that the rocking of the ship was part of the dynamic of being in storms.”
A skilled skier, angler and outdoorsman, Simms has been a problem-solver and innovator his entire life. His goal was to improve the outdoor experience, to make standing in a stream or enjoying a ski slope more comfortable and safer. He says his motivation wasn’t as much monetary as it was to make a difference in the worlds he loved.
Simms’ mind always moved in logical, analytical ways, even at a young age. Growing up in the Allegheny Mountains of western New York, Simms often found smarter ways of doing things, a skill that would serve him well throughout his life. “My family was in
