Simone Kimber
The incomparable Simone Constance Henriette Horemans Kimber, born October 20, 1924 in Brussels, Belgium, died May 2, 2026 in Nevada, Iowa. She passed away peacefully surrounded by her family, herself to the very end. She was born to Joseph Victor Horemans and Emilie Françoise Van Stappen. Victor was a butcher and Emilie was a tailoress. At age seven she underwent surgery for a mastoid ear infection, which left her deaf in her right ear. Her head would never be submerged for the next ninety-four years. She needed her hair done for this reason, and for over thirty years she relished the weekly ritual of seeing her dear friend Vicki Barker for washes, trims, sets, and perms. Her memories of Brussels before the war were full of abundance. She remembered the smell of fresh celery, beer brewing, wet washing hung over the stove, coffee burned near the Rue Haute, the sound of hand carts, the clink of trams, and church bells. She saw milk delivered by carts pulled by dogs, and street vendors selling flowers. On Thursday afternoons she and her grandmother, Anna Kokelaar, would see movies and eat choux à la crème. In May 1940 the Nazis invaded Belgium. She was fifteen. Along with her...[more]View Full Online Obituary and Tributes
mother and grandmother, her grandmother's dog and a butcher's bicycle, they left Brussels. Her grandmother and mother had lived through World War I and feared the invading Nazis. They inadvertently found themselves on the main road to the coast, trapped between the retreating British and advancing Germans. She saw dead and wounded men in burned vehicles on the side of the road, and they gave the bicycle to a fleeing British soldier. Eventually the Germans caught up to them. The Germans wanted water to drink and asked her to taste it, thinking it could be poisoned. They were then allowed to continue back home and returned to their apartment, to find it looted by the neighbors. Simone would spend the next four and a half years in Brussels working with her mother. Her father never found stable employment again. Simone and her mother worked as tailoresses in a couture house (Maison Simone). At one point they made a man's overcoat and earned a sack of potatoes. There was rarely heat, there was no coffee, no soap. In September 1944 the British liberated Brussels. She was nineteen. She met Alan Walter Kimber (RAF) at a dance hall. Alan offered his chair. She spoke no English but his French was good, and they pursued a courtship arguing politics and religion. When he presented her with an engagement ring, she took it but didn't fully expect him to return. He did return and they were married March 23, 1946, in the Grand Place in Brussels. Living in England after the war was a time of rationing. It was difficult to make ends meet, and so, in 1949 Alan took a job in Bangalore, India teaching radio communications for the Indian Airforce. Simone learned to type, and typed all his teaching materials in addition to sewing her own clothes by hand, having her appendix out, and performing in her first play. Her stories of India (and his) speak of two people excited to see the world, and to be living a grand adventure. They returned to England in 1952. Their daughter Anne was born in 1957. During these years they had a happy and very busy life. Simone drove stick and she liked to go fast - "I drive my car, I don't let my car drive me". She was teaching sewing and tailoring. He was building a quantometer to analyze the quality of aluminum alloys, he also built four greenhouses and grew flowering houseplants and tomatoes. In 1954 they bought a used Bluthner baby grand piano that had been the twenty-first birthday present to an RAF pilot who was killed in the Battle of Britain. In 1966 they decided to apply for work in the U.S., and settled in Parma Heights, Ohio. They loved being immigrants; the wide variety of foods, American cars, American furniture, the friendliness of Americans, the sense of freedom, the idea that you could succeed if you just worked hard, were all enthralling. They had a period of sending away for free things, such as a magnifying glass you could use to read a sticker on a raisin. It was disappointing to find out that the word on the sticker was "raisin". For the next twenty years Simone would continue to teach sewing and tailoring while running her own tailoring business. They moved many times for Alan's career. In 1967 they moved to Jefferson, Ohio, followed by Sanford, North Carolina from 1970-1971, Scotsville, New York from 1971-1974, and Caledonia, New York from 1974 to1986. When Alan retired in 1986 they moved back to England and lived in Kingsley, Cheshire until 1994. Simone and Alan returned to the states when they moved to Ames, Iowa in 1994 in order to be grandparents first to Iris Linnea Kimber Brenner, and then to Thea Genevieve Kimber Brenner. Simone was a happy grandma. She helped raise the granddaughters, and taught them Scrabble, French, proper french fry cooking techniques, and the best way to sew on a button. She told them stories of her childhood, her youth, and her adventures. These memories were retold many times and as they grew, Simone matched their age to hers as she lived them. These memories are indelible. Alan and Simone separated in fall 1997 and they divorced in 2005. She was extremely happy living on her own and puttering around with things just as she wanted them. In the next several years it was a great pleasure for the family and Simone to return to Brussels and walk the same paths, and visit the same places that she remembered vividly. This was her third phase of life and she relished it. She loved opera for the music and the designs and details of the costumes. Just hearing the name of an opera (that she approved of) would prompt an accurate rendition of the overture or a famous aria. Simone loved Carmen, La Bohème, Der Rosenkavalier, the Barber of Seville, Manon, and Tosca among others. Every day she drank a pot of coffee and a pot of tea. She was proud of her cooking, a skill she taught herself after she was married. She especially loved briny food like vinegary tomato salad and potato chips. She preferred milk chocolate with hazelnuts and savored pralines ordered from Belgian chocolate houses. She devoured Snicker ice cream bars and ate raw oysters with gusto all through this last April. She had a green thumb and planted tulip bulbs at the age of 101. Simone enjoyed good health. She was a cheerful person, happy to work hard and make beautiful, practical things, well-tailored clothes, warm cardigans, and tough knitted slippers. Her craft made her arms and hands strong and she beat her granddaughters in arm wrestling. She loved looking at the moon, her weather station and the stock market. She sought out delight and humor and always had a twinkle in her eye. She invented her own completely original pronunciations of words which would become stranger depending on her mood. She was extremely competitive in all games: badminton, pool, cribbage, Scrabble. The losers of Scrabble would be offered the score sheet to memorialize their humiliating defeats. She loved to say she was "going to be brilliant" before a devastating turn and "going to be wicked" before a joke. She was completely dedicated to curiosity; she committed herself to learning to use the computer and switched email platforms when she was ninety-nine. She read "La Libre Belgique" online. She learned to use a cell phone, watched YouTube tutorials to remember crochet methods and loved Wikipedia. When she couldn't sleep at night she would play word games on her computer and drink a glass of sherry. She was open-minded and invested in the progress of the world around her. She had respect for people who were good at their craft. She was an enthusiastic recipient of vaccines. And she was so brave! At age ninety-seven she underwent an aortic valve replacement and was an excellent patient. At age 101 she fell and broke her femur. She was determined to heal and be a success for her orthopedic surgeon and she did fully heal. Throughout her years in Iowa she had excellent medical and dental care. We thank her doctors, her dentist, her physical therapists, Ames Home Care, and at the end, the St. Croix Hospice staff who cared for her and us so kindly. We thought she would live forever, and she almost did. Honored to celebrate her life and mourn her passing are Anne Kimber (Bob Haug), Iris Brenner (James McCormack), Thea Brenner (Sharan Ganjam Seshachallam), David Brenner, and her friends across the world.
