Good Fruit Grower / November 2008 / Naná Simone - A life of caring

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Naná Simone - A life of caring

Naná Simone cared deeply for the tree fruit industry, the community, and the world at large.

The tree fruit industry—not just in Washington State, but around the world—is better off because Naná Simone chose to make it part of her life, her friends and colleagues say.

Simone, an integrated pest management consultant based in Wenatchee, Washington, died in an all-terrain-vehicle accident on September 25 at the age of 52. It was only after her death that the full extent of her ­activities, her friendships, and her influence began to unfold.

"She set an example for us all on how to live a life that contributes to the well-being of others in specific and real ways," Dr. Jay Brunner, Washington State University entomologist, said during a memorial service for Simone that was attended by more than 300 people. "We individually have been blessed that she chose to share her ideas, her passion, and her time with us."

Simone was born in Los Angeles, California, and at a young age demonstrated a love of the outdoors, plants, and insects. Though her mother, Sarita, was from Colombia and her father, Silvan, from Italy, she grew up speaking English. A family vacation to Spain sparked an interest in languages, cultures, and travel. She earned a bachelor's degree in romance languages from the University of California at Santa Cruz and became bilingual and bicultural in Spanish and English.

Love of teaching

Pest management consultant Andy Kahn met Simone 20 years ago while in graduate school at the University of California, Davis, studying pest management. Kahn moved to Washington State to work in 1991 and encouraged Simone to leave her native California to work with grape grower Tedd Wildman at Prosser, Washington. Within a few years, she was providing pest management recommendations on 3,000 acres from Wapato to Wallula, through her business, Simone IPM Consulting.

She was able to effectively combine her love of teaching with her specialized knowledge in tree fruit integrated pest management, Kahn said. "Rather than keep that knowledge to herself and use it for her own financial gain, she was out there trying to get people to do it for the good of the planet and for their own financial good."

She was involved in several projects that aimed to help growers reduce their pesticide use, including the three-year Yakima Pear IPM Project, which began in 1998. She moved to Wenatchee in 2002, the year she received the Women's Leadership Award for Science.

She started a Hispanic Orchardist IPM Program with funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency obtained through the Center for Agricultural Partnerships and helped teach an IPM technician course at Wenatchee Valley College.

Kahn said she took it upon herself to make sure everyone, even the smaller growers who couldn't afford to hire a consultant, had the information they needed to practice IPM. She wanted them to be able to make informed pest control decisions, rather than accept standard recipes from agricultural chemical distributors that might lead to purchasing and applying pesticides unnecessarily.

Larry Elworth, executive director of CAP, said she was an intuitive, tireless, and patient teacher. Although she could be extremely technical, she did a lot of hands-on and more practical work with growers, because that's what they needed and that was the way she could be most useful to them.

Empower

Sandy Halstead with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Prosser said Simone was proud of her efforts to empower growers to question information they were given by others.

"She was credible, capable, energetic, candid, and extremely thoughtful. She was always taking into consideration what would be best for whatever grower community she was serving. It was not about her at all. It was always about the growers," Halstead observed. "She was really at the top of her game. She had figured out her niche. Her niche was education, but not from the ­Extension standpoint, from the very practical."

She wrote an illustrated handbook in Spanish on monitoring for pests, natural enemies, and diseases in tree fruits, which was published with the aid of an EPA grant. Halstead said the manual sold "like hot cakes," and she hopes it can be reprinted. Simone also coauthored an orchard pest-monitoring guide for pears, in English.

She was a member of the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission's Apple Crop Protection Advisory Committee, and felt a responsibility to help make wise decisions on how research funds would be used each year.

"She always was prepared, and she always asked a lot of questions," said Ines Hanrahan, projects manager for the Research Commission, who regarded Simone as a friend and mentor. "She always spoke up for the little growers and the Hispanic growers and tried to be fair to everybody. I think it was cool because it's not easy to stand up to all those guys and say, 'This is what I think.'"

Kahn said Simone tended to take the side of the underdog. "Being a woman, and a gay woman, working for the underdog just came naturally to her, I guess."

Volunteer work

In 2007, she was appointed as Washington tree fruit coordinator for the federal Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), which provided cost-share funds for growers to adopt conservation practices. Halstead said it was due to Simone's influence that EQIP increased its funding for Washington tree fruit projects. She was also a regional coordinator for Washington State ­University's current Pest Management Transition Project.

Among the many community organizations she supported were the Pride Foundation and the Chelan-­Douglas Land Trust. On the day she died, she had been doing volunteer work with Kahn and another friend on a new trail that the Land Trust is building in Wenatchee. They were returning down the trail at the day's end when Simone, an experienced ATV rider, observed that Kahn was having too much fun on his ATV and said she wanted to ride it. She sped off, whipped around a bend, and then Kahn saw the ATV's front wheels come up and the machine land on top of her. Characteristically, instead of bailing out, she had been trying to get the ATV back under control and hanging on to the end, Kahn said. She died shortly afterwards.

Kahn said the best way her countless friends can honor her is to try to keep some of her many unfinished projects moving forward, as she would have wished.

Brunner said Simone leaves a legacy of people, a tree fruit industry, and an environment that are better off because she cared. "We know she cared because her caring was transformed into actions that led to transformative changes in people and the environment. The impact of her life will continue on in the people she helped and the products she produced."

Washington State University's Pest Management Fruit School, which she was helping to organize, will be held in her honor on December 10 and 11. The Washington Apple Education Foundation is establishing a scholarship in her name, and the Land Trust will make an annual ­volunteer-of-the-year award in her honor.

Simone is survived by her mother, her sisters Marina and Fernanda Simone, and brothers Steven and Edgardo Simone.