Ten Years Later: Remembering Jane Louise Simpkin

To some it’s a mystery, to others a sad reminder, but to the mother and sister of Jane Louise Simpkin, the bench in the quad outside the Arts Building at Wayland High School is a time capsule to a life cut too short by the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001.

Jane Louise Simpkin, at age 36, died on United Airlines flight 175 from Boston to Los Angeles, on September 11, 2001.  At 9:03 A.M. the plane struck the south tower of the World Trade Center, after the plane was hijacked by five terrorists.

Although Simpkin attended Wayland High School for four years, 1980-1983, she spent much of her childhood abroad with her parents and two sisters.

“We lived in eight different countries before America,” said Helen Hough, Jane Simpkin’s sister.  “Until that point, we had grown up all over the world, gone to international schools, so it was a very rude awakening to come into the American public school system.”

Through her Wayland High School days, Simpkin became interested in history, English, and languages of all sorts. She also did calligraphy, painting, photography, Latin Club, Student Council and backstage work in the theatre.

“Her mind was lovable, and strong, and opinionated,” said Ann Simpkin, Jane Simpkin’s mother, who is still a Wayland resident. “She was just marvelous.”

Coming out of high school, Simpkin had ambitions to become a lawyer, and attended the University of Michigan, and later transferred to Emerson college. However, once out of college, her career wandered into a new profession, music management.

“We used to call her the music cop,” said Hough. “Part of her job was going around and forcing royalties, collecting royalties for artists.”

Through the 90’s, Simpkin worked for the ASCAP, The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. She traveled all over the U.S. and worked with notable venues such as The Rathskeller, a nightclub in Boston.

“She was involved in the punk rock music scene. She would book bands from England and have them come over here. She traveled, had bands, was a band manager,” said Simpkin. “But then, in the car, she’d be listening to Patsy Cline, and Beethoven. I mean she was totally a Renaissance woman.”

At the turn of the century, Simpkin was balancing her career at ASCAP, with attending school at The Massachusetts School of Law, in order to become a lawyer. Towards the end of the summer in 2001, Simpkin was scheduled to take a business trip out to Los Angeles. ASCAP had purchased tickets for a round trip from Rhode Island, instead of Boston.

“She said ‘Goddammit, I’m not driving all the way down there, my back will hurt.’,” said Simpkin. “She just changed her tickets the night before.”

The next day, United Airlines flight 175 crashed, killing all 65 passengers and crew on board.

“It took me a few hours to even find out,” said Hough. “I did not know she was flying that day, she flew all the time, so it took me a couple of hours to find out. It never even occurred to me that we were going to be part of this horrible, horrible event. Then you sort of start to forget.”

“I don’t remember probably the first six months,” said Simpkin. “There are little bits that I remember, but I can’t remember most of it. It was like God said we’re not going to let you remember this.”

“People get so bogged down in the numbers of it; billions of dollars in damages, thousands and thousands of lives changed, and 70% increase in cancer risk for those firefighters,” said Hough. “There is one person that we lost, one Jane, one daughter, one sister, one aunt, one niece, and it’s hard for people to recognize that there were individual people.”

With Jane gone, the grief stricken Simpkin’s were contacted by hundreds of Wayland citizens who offered any help they could.

“If we could be in a place, Wayland was the place to be for us, because the support we got was amazing, just amazing,” said Simpkin. “People staying and helping, driving, and bringing food, the shops, every shop, the restaurants, Russells, the flower shop, the people were just magnificent.”

Living 90 miles north of New York City, Hough faced the tough task of attending a memorial in November, 2001. Along with attending the memorial, Hough had to provide DNA to confirm the identity of the body.

“One thing that was interesting for me was considering how we grew up all over the world, I was always thrilled to go to airports, and Jane was always thrilled to go to airports,” said Hough. “We used to love the smell of an airport, the smell of jet fuel, because it meant we were going to a new place, which was exciting. We just absolutely adored that whole experience. I remember going down there [Ground Zero], and the smell of jet fuel is now forever ruined for me. The odor down there was horrible and the burning. It singed your eyes; two months later it was still burning. I just remember the jet fuel, and it will never be the same for me.”

Today, Simpkin and Hough have pictures and words to remember Jane. However, the stories and memories are enough to rekindle images of a beautiful person with a beaming personality.

“She used to say ‘Come on Mom, let’s go get lost,’ because we always got lost,” said Simpkin. “We would get lost walking around the corner, but we would go, and we would get in the car, and we would drive.”

Among the memories left behind is a book of poems written by Jane Louise Simpkin during her days at Wayland High School. One poem in particular stood out to the Simpkin family.

“She wrote this one poem in particular and it’s not a premonition, but it’s like you can just imagine putting 9/11 in it and it fits perfectly,” said Hough.

The poem is written below, exactly the way Jane Louise Simpkin wrote it some thirty years ago.

“Why I hate Dan Rather…”

how cruel this is
I mark my calendar with tragedy
sorrow and shame
days of doubt
anger
remorse
sadness
and remember when?
war
famine
ravages of disease
infestations
horror
all
expertly
decanted
by your smiling
talking head
telling me
who killed who
with what
body counts
and suspect “expert” opinions
your hair is never out of place

So this is it?
I remember
Oklahoma City
J.F.K.
Martin Luther King
Botswana
suicide
the celebrity of dying well
too young
of excess
and not my birthday?

cry
for me
just once
you bastard

-Jane Louise Simpkin