William Maurice Simon

William Maurice Simon was born in San Antonio, Texas on November 6, 1956. Bill was the first born of Michael George and Deidra Simon. Four years later he was joined by brother Scott Simon.A few months after his birth the family moved to Chicago, IL. where Mr. Simon was employed as an agent with the FBI. Several years later Mr. Simon was transferred to Las Vegas, Nevada.  Bill called Las Vegas home. He lived there until he moved to Miami, FL. after graduation from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. In Miami he was hired as a sales representative by Simon & Schuster Publishing and transferred to Houston.  He worked as sales rep until the company began layoffs. He found work in a bookstore in downtown Houston.  Bill met my cousin in the bookstore. I used to tease him that we met because he picked up my cousin in the store. They became friends and she convinced us we needed to meet. He called on a Wednesday in August 1985. We talked until 2 am every night for 1 ½ weeks. We finally met for a date on Saturday of Labor Day weekend.My cousin was right; we were married November 15, 1985.  Bill took a job working for Exxon in their bulk fuels customer service center. He moved to several different positions within Exxon over the next 10 years. He ended up in the IT department at their downtown location until he was laid off in their next round of layoffs.  He began working contract for several other companies including Shell Oil and British Petroleum.  Bill had also begun working in computer forensics with our neighbor, a former FBI agent.  During that time he obtained his Private Investigator License, specializing in Computer Forensics. He also completed his Masters Degree in Criminal Justice.  In 2010 after the explosion of the BP rig in the Gulf of Mexico he was contacted by a representative of British Petroleum asking him to join their team setting up computer systems at the clean up locations in LA. MS, and Alabama.  He worked in several locations living in hotels for a week or more at a time.  When his work for BP ended, he returned to work as a Computer Forensics Investigator.  He worked a variety of cases including child pornography, missing children, several murder cases but he preferred intellectual property cases, less messy and emotional.  Bill was a loyal and thoughtful friend. He helped others including clients and often took outdated electronics as payment for his services. I told him once that if he started taking farm animals or produce as payment we were going to have a long talk.  He had a stroke in 2012 that slowed his work for a while. He had short term memory issues which often frustrated him. In the ER they ran an ultrasound on his carotid arteries and determined the left artery was 95% blocked.  Several months before the stroke our two dogs began licking the left side of his neck.   After the stroke and learning of the blockage in his neck, we contacted the Veterinary School at Texas A&M. We were told the dogs could probably hear the difference in the blood flow in the two arteries and since dogs lick things to try to heal them they were trying to heal his neck. If you have a dog constantly licking one area of your body for what you feel is no reason, have it checked ASAP.   I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. It spread to two vertebrae in my neck and then into three brain tumors. Bill was with me for every doctor’s appointment, every chemo infusion, every MRI, PET scan and every radiation treatment ( 5 on the vertebrae, 5 on each brain tumor). The PET scan tech was the same for each of the many scans I had over the next 4 years. He and Bill became friends and he would let Bill sit in the room with him while I was in the machine.  My first scan after Bill died, he asked about Bill and when I told him Bill died, he left the room with tears in his eyes.  Bill went in the hospital in January of 2019 with the flu. They did a chest x-ray and that is when we discovered the tumor in his right lung.  My oncologist became our oncologist.  She threw everything she had at his tumor, chemo, 15 straight days of radiation but it kept growing. It was wrapped around his aorta and could not be removed by surgery.  Bill never gave up.  We were convinced he would survive but it had too strong a hold on him.  He went under hospice care at home February 2, 2020 and died May 8, 2020.  A week after he died I had my immunotherapy infusion. I ran into my oncologist in the hall. She grabbed me and hugged me and we cried on each other’s shoulders.  I know she did everything she could for him.  One of the things I miss most about Bill are the memories, stories, and private jokes we shared. We had a habit of compressing the memory of a funny or happy incident to one word or phrase. We would later use that word or phrase in times when one or both of us needed a happy moment and the memory it invoked would make the day brighter.