Dick Simmons private plane story

Tom drove Simmons to "the airport"; only at general aviation did Simmons sheepishly admit he owned his own plane. Used to characterize Simmons's personal modesty against his financial scale.

There was one guy, a graduate of this department, named Dick Simmons. Anybody here live in Simmons Hall? It's an undergraduate dorm. Dick Simmons graduated from this department in 1952. He went to work for a steel company. Eventually he became president of Allegheny Ludlum Steel, and through two leveraged buyouts in the 1980s he became a half-billionaire. In the 1990s his son-in-law took that half billion dollars and through venture capital made him a billionaire. Dick Simmons is worth a lot of money. He's a very nice person, very humble guy. He dropped in my office once when the department head asked him how the department was doing. He had been here for an MIT Corporation meeting. I said, you need a ride to the airport? He said sure. So I went down, got my car. He very sheepishly said to me, Tom, we're not going to the main terminal — we're going to general aviation. So you've got your own plane, right. He was very embarrassed that he happened to own his own plane. He was a billionaire. But he was very modest in his manner — he said he never expected, his wife never expected, they would be so wealthy.