Emory Guy Simmons 1920-2013.

Early life.—Emory was born 12 April 1920, in Hillsboro, Fountain County, Indiana, the son of Floyd and Estel May McAlister Simmons, the middle child of three girls and two boys. He was very fond of Minnie, his maternal grandmother, called ‘‘Dolly’’ by everyone, who lived with the family. The family moved to Crawfordsville, Indiana, before Emory entered school to a home whose former location is now marked by second base of the Wabash College baseball field. Emory attended schools in Crawfordsville and graduated from Wabash College in 1941. During his days at Wabash he described gigs playing piano on Saturday nights in ‘‘juke joints where there were gangsters and fights’’. Often he would play the organ for church services the following morning. Music was to remain important to him throughout his life. Emory served in the Army (1942–1945) north Africa and Italy campaigns; he was one of the last members of the Mycological Society of America (MSA) to have been involved in World War II. Pvt. Emory Simmons was assigned to the 1st Motion Picture Unit of the Army Air Forces, Culver City, California, where he was trained to use a military-issue Speed Graphic, 435 format, probably a C-3, camera. He soon was promoted to staff sergeant and had several temporary promotions to technical sergeant. In Dec 1942 he was transferred to the 9th Combat Camera Unit XII ASAF AC and traveled abroad for the first time. As attested to by a certificate signed by the fictional Davy Jones, on his first trip Emory crossed the equator on ‘‘censored’’ date at ‘‘censored’’ longitude; the censored ship, later revealed as the ‘‘Mariposa,’’ crossed the equator as it headed to Rio de Janeiro for refueling on its way to the Mediterranean. He spent time in Cairo, where he recalled playing many games of bridge. As a photographer, he was sent to Palestine and Syria in late Apr 1943 and later to Bari, Italy. In early Feb 1944 Emory returned to Culver City where the 9th Combat Camera Unit received battle honors with a distinguished unit badge. After the war Emory returned to Indiana where he attended DePauw University, Greencastle. He received a master of arts degree (1946) with a thesis, ‘‘A monographic study of the Indiana species of the stromatic Sphaeriales’’. He acknowledged Truman G. Yuncker and Winona H. Welch of the Botany Department for ‘‘resources of information, advice and friendly encouragement made freely available’’ during his study; they perhaps were his major professors, although not stated. Emory spent the next four years at the University of Michigan where he worked on his doctorate, using cultural methods to study ascomycetes. Although his advisor, Louis E. Wehmeyer, did not encourage culture work, Emory wanted to determine the amount of variation within fungi grown on different media and to establish teleomorph-anamorph connections observed from single-ascospore cultures. After completing his degree at Michigan (1950) Emory moved to Hanover, New Hampshire, where he was an instructor at Dartmouth College (1950–1953) before moving to the Quartermaster Culture Collection.