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Obituary: Myron L. Simon / CCAC worker remembered as fun-loving soul
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Myron L. Simon always had a joke ready, whether it was for students and faculty at Community College of Allegheny County, where he worked for two decades, for audiences when he emceed banquets or for performances as a stand-up comedian in South Side clubs.
Mr. Simon, of Plum, worked for CCAC for 20 years as an educational technician, maintaining all facilities related to health and physical education, first at CCAC's Allegheny campus on the North Side and then at the Boyce campus in Monroeville.
The remains of Mr. Simon, who had been missing since December 2003, were found in a car pulled from the Allegheny River in Tarentum over the weekend. The Allegheny County medical examiner's office positively identified the remains as those of Mr. Simon, who was 53 when he went missing.
His death was ruled a suicide. Police found a note at his residence in New Kensington three years ago that hinted that he intended to harm himself, the medical examiner's office reported.
The remains were found inside his car submerged near a marina boat launch. An Emergency Medical Services diver participating in a training exercise found the car Saturday in 10 feet of water. Crews pulled the car from the river Sunday.
"It's sad," said Richard Betters, CCAC associate academic dean at the North Side campus. "Myron was a big lovable guy, very friendly with a good sense of humor."
Mr. Betters said that when Mr. Simon didn't come to work one day three years ago, he thought Mr. Simon was just sick but when that stretched into two days and beyond, he knew something was amiss.
"It was a shock when he came up missing. It was hard to put that together. He was a regular kind of guy who didn't live any fast lifestyle," Mr. Betters said. "When police came up empty-handed, we hoped that Myron for some reason had just dropped out and gone far away.
"We wanted to believe he was OK and had just backed out for whatever reason and had gotten into a different life. But in the back of our minds we thought maybe it was something worse. We didn't want that something to be confirmed."
Mr. Betters, who noted he didn't know a lot about Mr. Simon's life, said there had been "no suspicions, no indications" of what was to occur to Mr. Simon.
"He was a real stand-up, friendly guy, just a nice guy," he recalled.
Funeral arrangements are incomplete.
First Published December 6, 2006 12:00 am
