John Y. Simon

Biography Born in Highland Park, Illinois, to Jane Younker and Jay Simon, he was on the history faculty of Southern Illinois University Carbondale, for 44 years. Simon had MA and PhD history degrees from Harvard University. As a founding member of the Ulysses S. Grant Association, he began compiling Grant's papers while still a Ph.D. student and continued to accumulate and compile papers throughout his tenure at Carbondale. He received the Lincoln Prize Special Achievement Award in 2004 from the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College for his then-24, later 31 volume Grant series. The same year, he also received The Lincoln Forum's Richard Nelson Current Award of Achievement.

In January 2008, Southern Illinois University Carbondale officials locked him out of his office and barred him from campus over a complaint of verbal sexual harassment, which the university later determined to be baseless. He was preparing to teach at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville when he died on July 8, 2008, at the age of 75. Southern Illinois University Carbondale was preparing to officially clear his name and reinstate him at the time of his death. His successor at the Ulysses S. Grant Association was John F. Marszalek, who won a lawsuit against the university to retain control of Grant's files and moved them to Mississippi State University.

Quotes "(He is) one of the finest people I've ever met." -- Geoffrey Perret, author of Ulysses S. Grant: Soldier & President