Support for Robert & Barbara Simon

On August 19, 2020, I was awakened by a very early morning phone call. Normally, I would not have heard my cell phone ringing as I usually charge it in another room, but on this night, I had place my phone near my bedside. It was 4:30 in the morning, and it was my mom calling to tell me that my parent’s home was on fire. My parents were safe...they had made it out of the house. Unfortunately, they lost just about everything due to the fire or to heavy smoke. And to top it off, they do not have insurance. Nothing is covered.

You may know Robert Simon from Robert’s Quality Auto Body located off Palm Beach Blvd since 1976.  The place with “all the Volkswagens” or the “that German guy who fixed my dads car back in the day”, “papa smurf” as I’ve heard people call him because he always wore a light blue shirt and has has a gray or white hair since I was a young child. He was always a work horse till a few years ago when he suffered Colon cancer, a huge surgery and then a stroke. It slowed him down for sure but you will still see him driving around town picking up food daily for the animals at the ranch at young 84 years old. 

Barbara Simon owned the Route 80
Restaurant for over 20 years. Prior to that she was shop manager at Robert’s Quality Auto Body.  She cooked home cooked food for everyone in the East Fort Myers area and even lots of visitors from afar including my crazy friends lots of Sundays, naming some dishes after my husband and friends. The restaurant with the “really good biscuits and gravy” or “the Volkswagen Restaurant”. 

Their immediate needs are taken care of but my goal is to help raise money to cover some of the expenses to find them another home close to me, help replace some of the household items lost as well as clean up costs for the Simon VW Ranch. At 84 and well we will leave my moms age out of this, but I hate to think that they even need to worry about these things.