Celebrate life by making the best choices

In my exuberance to celebrate my birthday recently, and then with the deaths of famous folks and Mark Sanford's misdeeds, I missed the passing of an American icon.

The Post & Courier newspaper in Charleston called the 97-year-old an "Artist in iron." The renowned South Carolinian, a blacksmith by trade, but a mentor and guide to thousands through the "each one teach one" mantra, Philip Simmons has left his indelible mark on the streets of Charleston and in a craft still practiced by many in the area. The Philips Simmons Artist-Blacksmithing Guild was founded in 1995 in large part to carry on what Simmons began in his shop in the 1930s in Charleston. I’ve attended their meetings, written stories on their blacksmiths and pondered their gifts.

Simmons, skilled in using heat, hammer, anvil and iron, first developed his skill at creating works from iron, then was honored for his artistic eye. Then he was elevated to a the status of being a well-recognized national treasure. He died on June 22. Much like Bishopville's Topiary Artist, Pearl Fryar, he was sought after as a teacher and many have learned from him and copied his works. He’s been the subject of books and legends.

The Post & Courier article about his death and life said, "He also was one of the gentlest Charlestonians of his time. As he carried on a craft practiced in Charleston since the 1730s, Simmons also became one of the city's most well-known ambassadors."

The work of his hands remains, standing in the Smithsonian, the State Museum in Columbia and likely, far beyond. Taught his trade by blacksmith Peter Simmons (no relation), he began an apprenticeship around 1925 when he was about 13. He became a blacksmith in his own right about five years later at 18. On the anvil in the 1920s-40s, and possibly occasionally into the early 1960s, were horseshoes, fireplace pokers and other functional and practical items of work. But Simmons was able to see art in the forming of the iron and his skills took him from function to the elaborate and the wonderful.

It is his wrought iron gates that opened the doors to his artistry. I have stood before them and studied them. I have seen his work, and you may have too, and marveled at his ability to paint a picture, formed in his forge. According to the Post & Courier story, "A recent effort to catalog his work turned up more than 500 separate iron gates, fences, columns, window grills and other works," according to Steve Lepre, who "drove Simmons around to try to create a definitive documentation of his legacy.

Simmons designed and forged five gates along Stolls Alley alone," the story said, continuing, "And those 500 pieces don't include the pokers, tools, and shutter dogs that Simmons also crafted to make a living. There's a lot of that small stuff that's out there," Lepre said. "He was putting food on the table for many years." With the recent passing of Hollywood sensations and a musical icon in his own right, it's fitting to remember there are folks around us every day who are doing the best they can with what they have right where they are.

And that is the artistry of living.

Simmons never set out to become an icon of ironworks. He learned a trade. Developed his skill. Saw an opportunity to expand that skill into talent and never shied from hard work and staying true to what he was: a blacksmith from Charleston. Even, when it was likely that his type of work, a craft could be phased out and become obsolete and replaced by new technologies, he forged ahead, doing what he loved.

After 84 years, his flame is out, his anvil is quiet and his hands are at rest, but his works and the story that is his life live.

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