The road to the finish line is often uphill.
Marvin Sims
Back when The Picador was known as The Pub, a young man named Marvin L. Sims used to swing into town and entertain students with his R&B music.
Nowadays, Sims, 64, is a parapsychologist at University Hospitals. It's a far cry from touring the world playing music and making records. Sims said getting out of the music business was the hardest decision he's ever made. But looking back on that and other challenges he's faced, Sims said it was for the best and led him to develop his personal mantra: "The road to the finish line is often uphill."
Sims said he hasn't always lived by those words, but came to the revelation when he looked back on the challenges he bested that eventually made his life better.
"Basically, it came from assessing my life and I had to beat a lot of odds," he said.
Sims said he grew up in a segregated Missouri town where whites lived on one side of the track and blacks on the other. But that was normal for him. The challenges began in 1961 when one day after graduating from an all-black school, he joined an all-white unit in the U.S. Air Force.
Sims spent six years stateside as an air traffic controller. While stationed near Champaign, Ill., Marvin began performing R&B. After the Air Force, his music career blossomed and at its height, one of his albums, "Talking About Soul," sold 850,000 copies.
But then disco became a fad and R&B lost its popularity. Sims' contacts in the music business stopped returning his calls. So, with his children, dog and life possessions loaded into his car, Sims came to the University of Iowa and started attending college on the G.I. Bill.
"I knew I just couldn't be a bum," he said.
Despite the hardships of raising children, working and going to school fulltime, Sims got his undergraduate degree. He went back to school and got his master's degree in social work a few years later. Now, Sims is helping others understand that challenges are just a way to elevate your life.
"When I see how they deal with change, that is inspiring," Sims said.
— Lee Hermiston
