About the author
Jane E. B. Simmons is a free-lance professional writer, lecturer, and artist.
A member of Saddle & Bridle Magazine’s Board of Editors since March 2003, Jane “paints” a picture in her column, Word Portrait, of living horse people with their own words. It appears in the national full-color monthly equine magazine that is based in St. Louis, Missouri. Often her column is selected for the Magazine’s online www.SaddleAndBridle.com website.
Jane, an award-winning writer, has served as a national reporter based in Washington, D.C., a Missouri State Capitol News Bureau Chief, an editor, and a radio political commentator. She is a founder of several not-for-profit national organizations. She is a former State President of the Missouri Writers’ Guild, founded in 1915 at the University of Missouri Journalism School, for and by published professional writers. One of her four books was selected in many Missouri schools as an entertaining textbook on the state’s government; two of her books are on specific aspects of the Show Me State’s government. Her first book documented the history of a famous landmark in Missouri’s Capital City. Jane is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia.
A 1996 graduate of the Missouri Auction School, she “warms up” auction audiences with down-home humor in her persona of E. B. Livingsfun — costumed in long white gloves, tiara and golf shoes, and carrying a #4 Wood golf club.
Jane also offers fun personal empowerment Daisy Workshops: Hidden Dynamics of Politics, Grandparents as Genealogy Gurus, English Enhancement Power Skills, and her latest — Writing An Historical Biography Without Going Cross-eyed. She consents occasionally to accepting a commission to do a portrait oil painting. In her spare time, Jane’s been known to play a few rounds of golf.
Her latest book reveals the life and times of one of the most famous showmen in 20th Century America’s horse world. The century’s world events that impacted the young life and career of Art Simmons – the Great Depression, the Great War, World War II -- Jane kneaded into the book’s 20 chapters and 11 Features.
Arthur Simmons: American Icon Of The Horse World offers an insightful peek into the world of the horse and mule businesses during the first half of the 20th century. The 328-pagebook has 724 captioned photographs throughout its 8x11 magazine format pages. The Index lists over 2,100 names the horses, people, and horse farms/stables given in the book. Today’s horses find many of their ancestors mentioned in this book.
“When my father started out, there were no credit cards, TV, air-conditioned tractors, armored tanks, cell phones, and 18-wheelers,” Jane pointed out. “There were just mules and horses and plows, the telegraph, and the railroads to power America’s industry and wars, and to put food on kitchen tables.”
“Before his death in January 1995, Art Simmons was called a Living Legend by his peers. Since his passing, the full understanding and appreciation of his contributions to the industry during nearly eight decades of training, showing, breeding, and buying and selling horses has propelled him to the status of icon in the horse world,” Jane said. Genealogists are finding a gold mine of information in the book’s stories shared about the hundreds of individuals included in the 100-year span covered in the book.
A member of Saddle & Bridle Magazine’s Board of Editors since March 2003, Jane “paints” a picture in her column, Word Portrait, of living horse people with their own words. It appears in the national full-color monthly equine magazine that is based in St. Louis, Missouri. Often her column is selected for the Magazine’s online www.SaddleAndBridle.com website.
Jane, an award-winning writer, has served as a national reporter based in Washington, D.C., a Missouri State Capitol News Bureau Chief, an editor, and a radio political commentator. She is a founder of several not-for-profit national organizations. She is a former State President of the Missouri Writers’ Guild, founded in 1915 at the University of Missouri Journalism School, for and by published professional writers. One of her four books was selected in many Missouri schools as an entertaining textbook on the state’s government; two of her books are on specific aspects of the Show Me State’s government. Her first book documented the history of a famous landmark in Missouri’s Capital City. Jane is a graduate of the University of Missouri-Columbia.
A 1996 graduate of the Missouri Auction School, she “warms up” auction audiences with down-home humor in her persona of E. B. Livingsfun — costumed in long white gloves, tiara and golf shoes, and carrying a #4 Wood golf club.
Jane also offers fun personal empowerment Daisy Workshops: Hidden Dynamics of Politics, Grandparents as Genealogy Gurus, English Enhancement Power Skills, and her latest — Writing An Historical Biography Without Going Cross-eyed. She consents occasionally to accepting a commission to do a portrait oil painting. In her spare time, Jane’s been known to play a few rounds of golf.
Her latest book reveals the life and times of one of the most famous showmen in 20th Century America’s horse world. The century’s world events that impacted the young life and career of Art Simmons – the Great Depression, the Great War, World War II -- Jane kneaded into the book’s 20 chapters and 11 Features.
Arthur Simmons: American Icon Of The Horse World offers an insightful peek into the world of the horse and mule businesses during the first half of the 20th century. The 328-pagebook has 724 captioned photographs throughout its 8x11 magazine format pages. The Index lists over 2,100 names the horses, people, and horse farms/stables given in the book. Today’s horses find many of their ancestors mentioned in this book.
“When my father started out, there were no credit cards, TV, air-conditioned tractors, armored tanks, cell phones, and 18-wheelers,” Jane pointed out. “There were just mules and horses and plows, the telegraph, and the railroads to power America’s industry and wars, and to put food on kitchen tables.”
“Before his death in January 1995, Art Simmons was called a Living Legend by his peers. Since his passing, the full understanding and appreciation of his contributions to the industry during nearly eight decades of training, showing, breeding, and buying and selling horses has propelled him to the status of icon in the horse world,” Jane said. Genealogists are finding a gold mine of information in the book’s stories shared about the hundreds of individuals included in the 100-year span covered in the book.
South African Show Horse Magazine reported:
As South Africa's premiere horse publication wrote: Jane is a graduate of the University of Missouri, and a History Major, who "brings this intrinsic historical information right into the story -- the very story these facts create. The readers live the times they are reading."
"What is more revolutionary is the rolling into the story line the information that biographies traditionally drop to the bottom of pages in small type or place in the back on page after page of paragraphs coded with little numbers. Thus, her book has no footnotes and no Appendix." Thus, it is all easy to read text.
The article continues: “I want people today – and hopefully those many decades into the future – to know, and feel they experienced, the days when mass transit was stagecoach and steam engine trains. These were the days filled with the raw complexity of life in an America where high technology was the telegraph and the crank-up phone.”
Jane said: “I guess you could say I give a journalist’s unvarnished and unembellished perspective to a biography of one special horseman’s history-making life by giving readers the who, what, when, where and how of events as each page is turned. I chose to not filter the information for my readers. I allow the readers to experience the fun of self-discovery as they move from year to year through my parent’s young lives. After all, this is how Art and Ollie Simmons lived it.”
Art Simmons lived The American Dream. In my book, that weighs more than two pounds, readers find photographs not ever before seen outside the family, and references in the Index to more than two thousand horses, stables, and people.
