This thread has been started to allow people within the forum to pay their respects to Mike Simmonds, who sadly passed away.
Mike passed away on the 13th of May at 08.15 with his wife Sylvia and his daughter Susie at his side.
When the forum page has been fixed, appropriate tributes will be added by Scylla and others.
I have edited some pictures into my post on PAGE 1.
IMAGICAT
Birdie's DU Summaries 2018 https://www.imagicat.com/
2013 photos & vids here
eff37 on Flickr
There have been many people in the osprey community who I wanted to meet and Mike was one of them but that sadly has to be put on the "not achieved folder".
He was very helpful in a good way. He always was willing to help pursue a point.
He was with Rutland Osprey Translocation project from almost the start and he never lost the desire to help these birds in any way he could.
Tiger Signature
Thank You Scylla and Fergus for creating this thread.
When Mike called me on 19th January to say what his prognosis was it was so very sad, he had been through this before and I thought then he would get through it again, but as the months passed, it was not to be. Mike will be sadly missed from this forum, as you all know he was always the one who would contact various organisations when things were not going right, and wanted to sort everything out for all of us.
He was already on the forum when I joined in 2011 and I guess his connection to this part of the Community was his volunteering at Rutland Osprey Project during the initial translocation period in the 90’s. So he had a great knowledge of Rutland at that particular time.
It wasn’t until 2012 during Black Jaguar’s Charity Cycle that I got to know him more personally, often I would be out and come back to find funny and cryptic messages left on my answering machine. We finally met him and his wife Lynn in 2014 and had a lovely time with them. He was a great organiser, if anything had to be done on the forum he was the one to instigate it, one day he called me and said can you do something for Scylla, it was then that the famous Mission Control was born.
We shared a love of cruising and I always remember he was quite tickled to send me a photo of one port he was in and had to use a local tender which was called Osprey.
After Lynn died, he went on a cruise on his own, as he had long wanted to sail to a certain area where his uncle had died in 1944 during the Second World War. I happened to be friends with the Restaurant Manager on the ship and asked him to make sure he looked after Mike when he was on board, and that he was partial to nice steaks, I got a message from Mike on the first night saying he met Mandip and he had arranged for him to have a Rib Eye for dinner.
I have included a collage of some photos he sent me over the years, and one will always make me smile, when I noticed he hadn’t zipped his trousers up, so I replied saying have a look at that photo below your belt, he phoned to say that he and Lynn had a good laugh about that, and berated me saying trust Mary GK to notice.
It was a blessing that this last year he found Sylvia an old girlfriend from when they were teenagers, and any time I spoke to him he was always upbeat and never down regardless of his prognosis.
Sorry this is going on a bit, I am trying hard to think of the happier times rather than focusing on the sad, but my thoughts are very much with Sylvia and Susie at this difficult time.
R.I.P. Mike .
EJ's Memorial Balgavies Loch Ospreys 2023
scylla said:
Here is our Mike - I found the picture via google when he'd been absent for longer than usual and I knew he'd been ill, it was published in a local newspaper when he was battling Barclays Bank about broken interest rate promises (they didn't stand a chance!).
Lovely to see these photos of Mike thanks scylla. I just re-read our correspondence. Such a nice kind helpful man