Jeanne Hurley Simon, 77, chair of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, died February 20 at her home in Makanda, Illinois, five months after surgery to remove a malignant tumor from her brain. The wife of former U.S. Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), she gained national prominence for her activism in promoting libraries and literacy.
Simon was appointed NCLIS chairwoman by President Clinton in 1993 and reappointed in 1997. After her husband retired from the Senate in 1997, she helped him set up the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University/Carbondale, where she was an adjunct professor of library affairs.
Noting Simon’s commitment to NCLIS, Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) told the February 21 Southern Illinoisan newspaper, “The last thing she ever asked me for was to make sure that the appropriation for the commission was going to be OK. It meant a lot to her, even though she was still struggling with her own personal health problems.”
The Simon family has established the Jeanne Hurley Simon Library Fund to benefit SIU’s Morris Library.
Posted February 28, 2000.