A 6-year-old prodigy who appeared on local TV to illustrate stories as they were read on air, Sam Simon believed from an early age that he was destined for a career as a cartoonist. When he arrived at the Farm, Simon's creative talent and subversive brand of humor found a home at the Stanford Daily, where he provided illustrations for numerous covers and special issues.
Samuel Michael "Sam" Simon, '77, passed away at his home in Los Angeles on March 8 after a two-year battle with colon cancer. He was 59.
After graduation, Simon worked briefly at Filmation Studios, when he decided to write a script for a new sitcom called Taxi. A year later, at just 23, he was running the writers' room for the hit TV series.
He wrote and produced several shows over the next decade, including Cheers, and earned a reputation as one of TV's top talents. But in 1988 the world of animation came calling again, when director/producer James L. Brooks asked him to join a radical new project: a primetime adult cartoon called The Simpsons.
Developed by Brooks, Simon and Matt Groening, The Simpsons became a cultural juggernaut of the 1990s. Initially, however, no one could have predicted the scope of its success, least of all Simon. In an oft-cited anecdote, his skepticism about the series' prospects drove a wedge between him and Groening. By 1993, their relationship had devolved to the point that Simon left the show.
A lucrative severance package allowed him the freedom to choose his projects over the next few years—until he called his childhood friend and former Daily colleague Ron Beck, '77, MBA '79, JD '80, and announced he was done.
"He said, 'I can't take the grind of television anymore. I'm quitting to do what I've always wanted to do,'" Beck says.
Shocked, Beck asked what that could possibly be, to which Simon replied:
"Manage boxers."
Within a few years, his boxer, Lamon Brewster, had won the world heavyweight title. "Sam was just like that," Beck says. "Everything he did, he did to perfection."
Then in 2012, he discovered he had terminal cancer. Having amassed a small fortune from his Simpsons royalties, the nine-time Emmy Award winner launched his improbable final act: a race to give it all away. He endowed his eponymous foundation, which rescues and trains dogs for veterans and people with disabilities; distributed free meals to needy families in Los Angeles; and freed hundreds of wild animals from the concrete pits of roadside zoos, relocating them to nature preserves.
In the end, Simon was a cartoonist, and so much more, with successes that enabled him to dedicate his final years to the noblest goal he could imagine: alleviating some of the world's suffering. And in Beck's words, "We won't know for decades the final impact of Sam's generosity."
Survivors include a sister.
Mike Vangel is the editorial assistant at Stanford.
