Edwin Walter Sims Jr.

1909 - 1992

Edwin Walter Sims Jr was the fifth child of Edwin Walter Sr and his wife Charlotte, and their second son. Born in Chicago on Jan 31 1909, he attended Boys Latin in his preparatory years. His complete academic record is unknown, but did include attendance at the University of Michigan, in the college of literature, science and arts, in 1930. Better known as Ned, he was a jovial, friendly, fun-loving fellow. He enjoyed card playing, tennis and parties. He was well dressed, had excellent social skills and danced well.

It seems as if 1933 was an eventful year. Ned and his brother Frank started a new rifle club in Chicago chartered by the National Rifle Association. He was feted at all the parties given for his sister Percy who was having a “debutante” year as evidenced by multiple newspaper articles in the Chicago Tribune. He worked at the First National Bank in Chicago where he met a fellow banker- John Ford Evans Sr. At some time in 1933, he introduced his co-worker to his younger sister Percy and the young couple was married late in November of 1934. Around this time, Ned met and fell in love with Bettina Mae Croft and 1935 was filled with engagement parties for the young couple. Dinner parties at the Palmer House, and Congress Hotels. Tea dances at the ballroom of the Powhatan and the Drake Hotel, luncheons at the Blackstone and the Chicago Athletic Club all carefully chronicled in the social pages of the Chicago Tribune. A social whirl capped by Ned and Bettina’s wedding on Jan 25, 1936. After a honeymoon in Miami, they started married life in an apartment 6 blocks south of his parents on Bellevue Place and 3 blocks south of her parents’ large apartment at 900 Michigan Ave.

Bettina’s social activities were frequently in the newspapers but little was said about Ned. The young couple greeted three daughters: Pamela in 1941, Suzanne in 1943 and Holly in 1951.

Little is known about any work experience, since no job seemed to last. By various reports, he lists himself as a banker, assistant comptroller and “executive”. He was also given the title of Vice President of the Au Gres State Bank, despite living in Chicago. After his marriage to Bettina Croft, he was hired for a short time by his father-in-law, William Hilton Croft, vice-president of the National Lead Company and president of the Manganese Division Corps. After Croft’s death in 1949, it is not known if Ned ever worked again.

Subsequent to his father’s death in 1948, Ned’s mother Charlotte decided to move out of the house at 112 Bellevue and into a residential hotel on Lake Shore Drive. Ned and Bettina quickly moved into the vacant home filled with E.W’s cornucopia of treasures and gifts such as the 5’ long intricately carved elephant tusk, a personal gift from Teddy Roosevelt. Here they raised their family.

Summers were spent at Sims Ranch where the family built a stylish summer house converted from a one room school house brought to the site using skids on the ice. A society writer from the Chicago Tribune actually spent a weekend at the house and wrote a lengthy article about Sims Ranch and the Edwin Sims Jr’s new home. Ned was known to his many nieces and nephews as an easy going fellow and they were amused when he played his bugle outdoors each morning to announce the day. NB:this captivation with the bugle was based on Ned’s fascination with the character Teddy Brewster in the play Arsenic and Old Lace. He played the bugle with the same enthusiasm and skill as did the character.

Ned enjoyed being in a part of the upper-class social world and the son of a famous man. He was witty and entertaining and no stranger to a cocktail; at one raucous party, he was known to actually have worn a lampshade on his head. Interviewed about his loss of weight in 1960, he explained his diet in a written format. Breakfast consisted of weak tea. Lunch was 1 bouillon cube in ½ c of diluted water. Dinner was one pigeon thigh and 3 oz. of prune juice (to be gargled only). He expanded his diet of weekends to include broiled butterfly liver or 1 tail joint of a sea horse. He was always armed with a smile and a humorous quip.

Once the trust of Sims Ranch was dissolved in the early 1960’s and the profits disbursed in 1964, Ned and Bettina sold their property in Au Gres and bought a vacation house at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Here they spent their summers until Bettina’s death in 1978. After that, Ned sold the house at Lake Geneva and the house at 112 Bellevue and moved into an expansive apartment at 990 N Lake Shore Drive and dined frequently at the Cape Cod room in the Drake Hotel. When the money ran out he moved into a hotel suite in a less prestigious location, curtailing his social life accordingly. In in his last decade, he became a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason. Ned died Feb 2 1992.

Ned chose to be buried next to Bettina at the Rosehill Cemetery and Mausoleum in Chicago.