Now, as Sims contemplates his impending retirement in December, the licensed heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning technician and supervisor in Energy Services looks back on his 42-and-a-half-year career at the University with a sense of awe.

It’s hard to believe, he said, that so much has changed since he joined the USC staff as a 19-year old cement finisher earning 75 cents an hour.

“I feel as though I grew up with the campus,” said Sims, who when he started work here, never expected the kind of professional development he experienced or other changes that have occurred in his lifetime.

When he was hired, campus restrooms were still segregated, five of which were designated for African-Americans in the vicinity of the Horseshoe, Sims recalled. In those early years of his employment, he said, there were “good days and bad days and I thank the Lord the good days outweighed the bad ones.”

With the arrival of the first black students in 1963, opportunity also opened for blacks working at the University, he said.

Sims worked his way up by coupling a willingness to learn new skills with opportunities in a variety of different specialties, from plumbing to brick masonry to heating. He also put himself through Midlands Technical College at night to learn air-conditioning and refrigeration. The result was a lifetime of upwardly mobile employment that enabled him to support his own brothers and sisters and also raise a family of his own three children.
Even though he’ll be retired after Dec. 23, his last official day on the job, don’t look for Sims to quit work completely. His legendary work ethic won’t let him.

After his return from a long-promised trip to Hawaii with his wife of 41 years, Rebecca, a retired surgical aide at Baptist Hospital, he plans to pursue self-employment as an HVAC technician in Columbia. “I’ve come a long way and I don’t intend to stop now,” he said. "I’ll still be working out there somewhere.

“I enjoy my work and that’s why I’ve stayed with it so long,” said Sims, adding, “I’ll always respect USC because it brought me a long way and gave me the opportunity to do a lot of different things.”

10/04