LATE MISS DORIS G. SIMS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 21 April 1934, Page 2

LATE MISS DORIS G. SIMS

REFERENCE IN ENGLISH PAPER The “Western Gazette” (England) makes the following reference to the late Miss D. G. Sims, formerly on the teaching stall' of the Nelson School of Music: — The untimely death of Miss Doris G. Sims, a daughter of Mr and Mrs T. 11. Sims, of Manor Farm, Alvediston is a deep loss, both to a wide cricle of friends and to the community in general (writes one of her former teachers). Alisa Sims was a girl of fine character and high attainments. She was for some years a pupil at Bishop Wordsworth’s School, Salisbury, where she attained distinction both on the academic and on the social side of school life. She played for the school in hockey, netball, and tennis, and early gave signs of unusual musical talent, while her friendliness, unassuming manner, and willingness to help in any way made her very popular both with staff and pupils. She passed the Oxford Senior Local Examination with first-class honours and exemption from Matriculation, and in 1020 proceeded to the University of Bristol. Here she began to study for an arts degree, but decided after a slan t time to develop her musical abilities instead. She therefore left the University, and cpialificd for the L.R.A.M. degree in pianoforte playing. After a few years’ teaching experience at Clifton' and at Scafortli, she left England in the summer of 1927 to take up a post on the staff of the School of Music of Nelson, New Zealand. This was arduous work, and tier time was fully occupied, but she enjoyed life, and' it was evident from her letters that she threw herself with zest into the varied activities, of the school and the town. She witnessed some of the horrors of the earthquake disaster which ravaged that area of New Zealand in 1928, and wrote home "rapine accounts of those experiences. She returned to England at Christmas, 1932, and after a short rest at home entered upon another teaching post in Paris. .She was spending the Christmas holidays at home, when the dental trouble developed which was to end so tragically on titli February. The cutting short of so young and promising a life is one of those inexplicable tragedies which seem inevitable in human experience, but ol her it may truly be said “To live, in hearts we leave behind is not to die.