Rose Waldron Sims

Beloved mother, grandmother, and friend to so many, Rose Sims, passed away on Sunday afternoon, November 24, 2024, family by her side, just three months short of her 99th birthday. Despite battling COPD, congestive heart failure, several falls, and other issues for four years, Rose maintained a mother’s spirit and was determined to do as much as she could as long as she could – and she did!

Rose Goodwin Waldron’s story began as she was delivered at home at 120 Ramsey Street in Dublin, Georgia, on Saturday morning, February 27, 1926. She was welcomed by her parents, Howard Chambless Waldron, and Anna Pearl Waldron neé White, and her sister, Maria Haynes Waldron. Of note, an older brother, Howard Jr. was born in 1922 but lived only 36 hours.

As a girl, Rose developed a lifelong love for music, family, and entertaining. She was a talented pianist and remembered taking piano lessons in April 1936 during the great tornado scare and having to be walked home by her piano teacher. She starred in the senior school play “Almost Summer”  in Dublin’s senior high school. And, like so many of her generation, she grew up during the Great Depression (remembering how everyone at the bank in Dublin except her father was let go by Mills Lane in 1930) and World War II (remembering how in every class, boys would enlist in the war effort – and in every class, some never returned).

Rose attended Shorter College (which she did not like) in 1943-1945 and Mercer University (which she did) from 1945-1947. She joined the sorority Alpha Delta Pi, to which she remained faithful the rest of her life.

In the fall of 1947, her friend Dorothy Seaton invited her along to a mixer at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Dublin, where she met a young Navy physician from Atlanta, Stuart Eugene Sims. After a short courtship, the two became engaged and were married at the First Baptist Church on Saturday, March 20, 1948, in the social event of the year in Dublin.

Rose and Gene were transferred by the Navy first to Green Cove Springs, Florida, then Eatonton, Georgia. In 1951, they located to Atlanta, where they would live the rest of their life, as her husband worked his way at Grady Hospital through internship and residency. As her husband began a 50-year-plus private practice with an office in the Doctor’s Building of Crawford Long, the couple moved from an apartment around the corner from Piedmont Hospital to a small house on Drewry Street and to larger houses in Northwest Atlanta as the family grew, before finally retiring to of Smyrna.

Rose and Gene raised two children, Stephen (born 1958) and Jennifer (born 1960). As the children grew, Rose turned a longtime hobby, antiques, into a business; after 2 years of renting space at the famous Dixie Galleries, Rose opened her own shop, called Meeting House Antiques, in Roswell. She ran that business until she retired in 1991, moving from Crabapple to downtown Roswell in the early 1980s.

She greatly enjoyed traveling, the theater, and many days of her final years was spent as loving mother to her to children and grandmother to Jennifer’s two sons, Andrew (born 1999) and Aaron (born 2003).

Sadly, the love of her life, Gene, passed away on Memorial Day 2009. They were married for over 61 wonderful years.

In addition to her husband, Rose was preceded in death by her parents; her sister; and several aunts, uncles, and cousins – by reaching almost 99 years old, she was the final person alive along her row of the extensive family tree.

Rose is survived by her two children, Stephen of Smyrna after many years in California and Nevada and Jennifer (Bob) of Smyrna after many years in New Jersey; her two grandchildren, Andrew and Aaron, both of Smyrna, five nieces (Margaret, Joan, Lynnie, Michele, and Anna {Robert Dale}), one nephew (Captain Bill {Gwen}), and many cousins, first cousins, double first cousins, cousins once removed, the usual.

A small memorial service for Rose will be held in late December or early January at Covenant Global Methodist Church on Atlanta Road in Smyrna, to be followed by a private interment at Arlington Memorial Park. Details will be available in December.

In memory of Rose, donations may be made to her favorite charity, the American Cancer Society or Covenant Global Methodist Church in Smyrna, Georgia.