Lisa Ann Simms

Woman killed as she lived dream
Lisa Simms of Palm City is thrown from her daughters' new horse.

By Pat Moore
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 07, 2004

PALM CITY — When Lisa Simms was a third-grade student at Jensen Beach Elementary School, she wrote a paper titled My Magical Horse.

"I want a horse that will take me to a dream," she wrote. "I want a saddle with a button that will take me anywhere."

Simms' husband, Michael, was given his wife's prose Sunday, two days after she was thrown from the horse they had given their children as an early Christmas present a day earlier.

Lisa Simms, 36, died at St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach about seven hours after she grabbed a saddle at the Palm City Equestrian Center and mounted the 4-year-old quarter horse named Hawkins.

As she rode around the arena where the horse was being boarded Friday afternoon, "something spooked him," her husband said.

The horse, chosen last month because of his docile nature, took off at a gallop and rounded a curve, throwing her into a wooden fence.

The impact lacerated a major vein in her abdomen, causing massive internal bleeding.

Simms' death stunned friends and neighbors, who described her as "a loving, caring and giving servant" to her family, workplace, church and community.

"For everybody who crossed her path, she left a little sunshine in their lives," said Krista Lozeau, who became best friends with the former Lisa Johnson in sixth grade at Stuart Middle School.

She was the 1986 Martin County High School homecoming queen and a cheerleader who was voted the student with the "sexiest eyes" in her class, Lozeau recalled.

Simms graduated from the University of Florida, earned a master's degree in business administration and for the past three years traveled extensively as district training manager for a pharmaceutical company.

"She lived life passionately and intentionally," her husband said. "Every ounce of every day in her life was serving someone else effectively, whether it be through her children, her family, her work or her faith."

Pastor Chris Hodges of the Treasure Coast Presbyterian Church in Stuart, where Lisa Simms led the women's ministry and made two of the church's stained-glass windows, said a funeral service is scheduled for 4 p.m. Wednesday at The Grace Place on Salerno Road, the only place he could find large enough to accommodate the number of people expected.

"She gave far more than she took with her relationships," Hodges said. "She's the kind of person a lot of people would say she is their best friend. She had unbelievable energy, passion and faith."

Dozens of family photographs were displayed Monday on the grand piano at the Simms' home, where friends helped the girls — Jordan, 10, Madeline, 8, and Olivia, 5 — decorate a Christmas tree on Sunday.

"In all that she did, she integrated her faith into it," Hodges said. "She glorified God in every aspect of her life."

Lisa Simms helped all of her daughters make quilts for their bedrooms. She decorated plates bearing each girl's name and made scrapbooks as keepsakes.

"The limits of her giving were infinite," Hodges said.

Friday morning started like many for Lisa Simms, her husband said.

She went jogging at 5:30 a.m., made bacon-and-egg breakfasts for her girls and took her husband coffee and the newspaper in bed.

She and Lozeau planned to go trail riding that morning, but they received a call from another friend whose son was hospitalized in intensive care at St. Mary's Medical Center. Both women canceled their plans and went to the hospital, her husband said.

"She gave food and comfort to the family in the hospital that later that night she passed away in," he said.

The family has asked that donations be made to St. Mary's Trauma Center or the Quantum House at St. Mary's Medical Center in her name.

Friends may call from 6 to 8 p.m. today at Forest Hills Funeral Home in Palm City.

Lisa Simms, who took riding lessons, never got the horse she dreamed of as a child. Her two older daughters began riding horses about five years ago and were getting good at it and wanted to compete, Michael Simms said.

When the couple gave the horse to their daughters Thursday, "the girls were dumbstruck," he said. "They were so thrilled."

That night, Michael Simms said, his wife turned to him in bed and said, "This is the happiest day in my life."

He watched as she rode the horse around the arena the next afternoon, before she was thrown.

"She had such joy. . . . Her joy was fulfilling that dream for herself and her girls."