Benjamin G. Simons passed into the merciful hands of God on February 7, 2015 at the age of 89. He was born on Aug. 11, 1925 in Kenefic, Oklahoma to Dora Belle and Isaac Nelson Simons. The family moved to Fort Worth, Texas in the early 1930s. He and his older brother Marvin graduated from R.L. Paschal High School in 1943. Ben joined the U. S. Navy a day after his eighteenth birthday in the midst of World War II. After training in Williamsburg, Va. and Gulfport, Miss., he served in the Seabees from 1943 to 1946, stationed mainly in the New Hebrides. On Dec. 7, 1946, he married Mary Berry, and their marriage lasted 58 years until her death in 2005. Ben used his construction training in the Seabees to work a variety of surveying and construction jobs in South Texas until joining the Texas Highway Department's Fort Worth office about 1956 as an engineering technician and draftsman. That year saw the birth of the first of his two daughters, Pamela, and Phyllis followed in 1962. Following retirement from the Highway Department in 1981, Ben and Mary traveled widely in the U. S. and Canada. From 2006, he lived with his daughter Pamela Stephan and her husband David in San Marcos, Texas. As many members of the Kyle Area Senior Zone and the Onion Creek Senior Center in Buda know, Ben played a mean game of 42 and enjoyed regular dominoes as well. His daughters Pamela and Phyllis survive him as well as three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.