Bud Simms

Man’s passion for life fueled full service station’s success

Christian Giggenbach

To say that times have changed since Kenneth Simms opened his first gas station in Ronceverte in 1950 would be more than an understatement.

“When I opened up the gas station in Ronceverte, gasoline sold for 24.9 cents a gallon,” Simms said.

However, through the years since Simms first uttered the phrase “filler’ up?” one fact of life has always been constant. Anyone looking for service from the World War II veteran at his Esso station in Ronceverte, or later at Simms Exxon in Lewisburg, was greeted with a friendly smile, treated honestly, and most likely entertained with a story or two.

This business formula has kept Simms Exxon at the same location on Washington Street in downtown Lewisburg for the last 48 years, helped raise four children and has allowed a countless number of vehicles to continue motoring through the Greenbrier Valley.

“A gas station like this one that still has full service is a dying breed,” Simms, now retired, said. “If you want, we still will check your oil and your tires, and also clean your windshield,” Simms said.

There were four gas stations operating in Lewisburg in 1960, and Simms Exxon is the lone survivor. With the strict guidelines placed on Lewisburg’s historical district, there isn’t much of a chance that another gas station will be opening in the downtown area very soon.

But building a business was not on Simms’ mind on Dec. 7, 1941, when the United States was on the brink of entering World War II.

“I was a senior at Lewisburg High School when they bombed Pearl Harbor,” Simms recalled. He went off to war in 1942.

Before long, the teenager, who grew up milking cows on a Maxwelton dairy, found himself in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hancock, manning machine guns on the back of a dive bomber and operating radio traffic. A world much different from the one seen from the vantage point of a milk stool.

“That will make your head spin just a little bit,” Simms said with grin. “We were on that carrier for two years and never got off of it, but you never heard one person complain about it. Not a soul.”

Well, to be truthful, one person could have complained a little bit.

While shooting at an enemy plane that had dipped below an American aircraft, Simms’ aim that day was a little bit less than desired. He made contact with a plane, but it wasn’t one of the enemy’s. The American plane landed safely, but Simms wanted to make sure.

‘I shot eight holes through the tail of one of our own planes once,” Simms said. “We had a little intercom system between the two of us, and I asked the pilot if he had felt anything when he was up there. He said, ‘Yeah, my rudder stick was wobbling a little bit.’”

Battling typhoons as well as the enemy, Simms was on the second deck when suicide planes hit the Hancock in 1945, resulting in the loss of nearly 100 men. About six months later, World War II ended and Simms decided to return home.

“I got out of Navy after the war in 1945. I came back to Greenbrier County and sold Keisier-Frazier cars in White Sulphur Springs, then I worked for Goodyear for awhile and then I bought the Esso gas station down in Ronceverte,” Simms said.

“I went on a blind date in 1946 and it has lasted for 62 years,” Simms said about his wife, the former Della Lee Brant. “We got married in 1948. She was working for the telephone company and then the Federal Reformatory in Alderson, but when we had our second child, she decided to stay home and raise the kids. She did a good job, too, because all of them stayed out of jail.”

The Simms family did more than just stay out of jail, each of them finding success in his or her own right. Two decided to stay in Greenbrier County — George, who runs the gas station, and Sandra, a real estate appraiser. The oldest, Kenneth II, is the manager of a Pennsylvania Wal-Mart and Larry has owned a business in Florida, The Front Porch Cafe, for the last 22 years.

Now that his son is running the business full-time, Simms might be found more often in his woodworking shop or possibly at his camp on the Greenbrier River, but he’s never too far away from the corner gas station that’s only about a mile and-a-half away from where he was born near Muddy Creek Mountain.

“These days I work when I need to, but I will always be around here to bug the customers,” Simms joked. “I’ve always believed that hard work and treating your customers right was the key to business. Lewisburg has been good to me and I’ve got two customers that have been with me since 1952, Sam Taggert and Wayne Herkness. I would really like to give them a big thank you.”

— E-mail: cgiggenbach@register-herald.com