Simon Said to Help Others, and His 7 Children Have Done So

As his seven children grew up, the philanthropist and former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon worked hard to teach them how to do good works. Now he is giving his two sons and five daughters the same task on a larger scale: helping him distribute more than $350-million to charity in the coming years.

Mr. Simon and his late wife, Carol G. Simon, devoted much of their time and energy to making sure their children, who now range in age from 30 to 46, would have a strong sense of civic responsibility.

As they became adults, Mr. Simon encouraged them to adhere to a concept he adopted from Andrew Carnegie. “Wealth is not to feed our egos but to feed the hungry and to help people help themselves,” he says, borrowing from Mr. Carnegie’s 1889 essay “Wealth,” which he has insisted that all his kids read.

The Simon children, who have just become full-fledged members of the board of the William E. Simon Foundation, say they have vivid memories of the volunteer work of their father and late mother.

For years, Mr. Simon would arise early on Christmas morning at his New Jersey house and head off to volunteer at Covenant House, the shelter for runaway youths in New York City. As his kids grew up, he’d take them along.

“We’d work in the kitchen serving meals, we’d clean, we’d talk with the teen-agers and unwed mothers, and we’d hand out Christmas presents,” says Katie Simon Morris, 30, Mr. Simon’s youngest daughter, whose charity work today includes helping Christmas in April, an organization that refurbishes houses for low-income, elderly, and disabled people.

Mr. Simon’s eldest son, William E. Simon, Jr., 46, is now chairman of the board of Covenant House California, in Los Angeles, and gives to charity through his own foundation.

“Our parents never said to us, ‘Go and do volunteer work. Instead, we learned by their example: what they did and what they felt,” says Mary Simon Streep, 43, who volunteers at Kids in Crisis, a shelter in Connecticut.

Over the years, Mr. Simon directed each of his children to the essay on wealth by Andrew Carnegie. The William E. Simon Foundation has formally adopted as one of its guiding principles Mr. Carnegie’s belief that charity should be aimed at helping people help themselves, “but rarely or never to do all.”

Julie Simon Munroe, 34, says she has seen how this principle guides her father. “Whenever he gives money away, it’s always earmarked toward something specific. It’s not thrown to a cause that could get absorbed by extraneous costs, but has to be put toward something real,” says Ms. Munroe, who helps administer the Simon Family Scholarship Fund at the University of Vermont.

“A scholarship is never a full ticket — a concept that is very much what Andrew Carnegie believed in,” she says. “If a person has to invest in their education, then chances are they will do better and try harder, because they have to.”

Leigh Simon Porges, 40, says that her dad is willing to be flexible in his philosophy. Ten years ago, she and a friend, Anne DeLaney, had a plan to start a program to help cancer patients get their wishes fulfilled.

Mr. Simon asked all of his children to come up with new ideas to help people help themselves, such as giving partial scholarships, says Ms. Porges. “But we approached him with our idea and said, ‘You can’t give somebody half a wish. This is all or nothing.’”

Mr. Simon’s reaction, without hesitation: “He was very excited and, with an initial gift of $50,000, got the ball rolling,” says Ms. Porges.

The program, called Happiness Unlimited, was first embraced by Union Hospital in Union, N.J., and is now offered to patients at a total of four area hospitals. Over the years, Mr. Simon has contributed more than $365,000 to help pay for patients’ wishes, which have included trips and reunions with family members.

Aimee Simon Bloom, 37, says she and her siblings welcome the chance to help their father with his foundation and do not resent the fact that he is not giving that money to them.

“You don’t want your children to grow up just being handed loots of cash,” says Ms. Bloom, whose charity background includes a job with the AmeriCares Foundation. “Three or four generations down the road they don’t have the sense that it was really hard work that made the money. It’s better to work.”

J. Peter Simon says his brother and sisters hope to impart to their own children — his father’s 22 grandchildren — the same charitable impulses they got from their parents.

“Every time I make a gift to something, I tell my kids about it,” says Peter Simon, who has served as a board member of the National Council for Adoption and has his own foundation. “I wrote a check the other day to the Hole in the Wall Gang, which is [the actor] Paul Newman’s camp. I was so excited about it, I told my son. His reaction was, ‘Let’s go see that place, Dad, I want to work there!’ ”

Adds Peter Simon: “We must be doing something right.”

William E. Simon, who helped his children financially earlier in their lives, says that providing such assistance is not always the right thing for people of wealth to do. But he is proud of the way his children have handled their money, careers, and families. “They could afford to move to Palm Beach or whatever watering hole and live out the rest of their lives in comfort,” he says. “But I don’t believe they’ll ever do that. They are all dedicated to the upbringing of their own children and working to help other people.” Chris Casaburi, for The Chronicle J. Peter Simon says his brother and sisters hope to impart their father’s legacy of giving to their own children: “Every time I make a gift to something, I tell my kids about it.”