The best is yet to come
Multitalented Atascocita woman has lived and worked around the world, but health scare brings her back to jazz
Cheryl Ash-Simpson was just 10 when a male relative told her girls don’t play the saxophone.
Those words were like fire in her young mind. So she ditched the violin and flute, which she felt lukewarm about, and took up the sax just to prove him wrong. She loved everything about playing it, performed in high school and college, and became the only female musician in a 16-member big band in her native Indianapolis for nearly decade.
“I really wanted to be in Earth Wind & Fire’s band,” said Ash-Simpson, 57, who looks like a supermodel at nearly 5 feet 11 inches tall. “I love the sound of the sax, and I was always up for a challenge. I like doing things women aren’t ‘supposed’ to do. And there’s nothing cooler than being on stage and performing. To hear the applause as you walk out on stage and to know everyone there is listening, there’s nothing like it.”
Music isn’t the only calling for the Atascocita resident. Ash-Simpson is a renaissance woman, of sorts. She’s an actress, model, seamstress, documentary filmmaker, former aerospace executive, world traveler, breast cancer survivor, and a wife and mother.
Initially, her goal was to be a musician and a fashion designer. She made most of her own clothes because finding outfits to fit her tall frame was challenging. But reality set it, along with sage advice from her mother, who encouraged her to find a job that could pay the bills. So Ash-Simpson majored in mechanical engineering technology at Purdue University in Indiana. She earned a master’s degree in industrial technology and became the first female assistant professor in Purdue’s school of technology.
She excelled in the field and worked as a quality director for Rolls-Royce in Indianapolis and at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Atlanta and Fort Worth while raising her daughter, Simone, now 25. (She was married for 10 years before divorcing.)
In 2009, just three days prior to getting married for a second time, to Richard Ash-Simpson, whom she met while working at Rolls-Royce, she got a diagnosis of stage 2 breast cancer. On the wedding day, only her husband and two best friends knew her diagnosis. She even went on her honeymoon to Jamaica. But when she returned, she underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment “like a project manager as I do with everything,” she said.
Shortly after, the couple moved to Malaysia and Singapore, where her husband took a job.
“When we moved to Malaysia, I was done with my treatment, but everything fell out. My hair, eyebrows, lashes, everything. I remember walking from the car to my desk feeling like I was done. But my faith in God and my family helped me through it.”
Ash-Simpson, who took a job in Singapore in international trade compliance, turned her story into a film. She wrote and produced the documentary “Sunshine, Noodles and Me” out of her journey with breast cancer and living in Malaysia and Singapore. The film, which debuted in 2014, took top honors at the Capital City Black Film Festival in Austin and appeared on PBS in Los Angeles.
“Cheryl is the type of person who sets goals with plans in place,” said Kathy Scott-Gurnell, a Houston psychiatrist who has been married to Ash-Simpson’s brother, Morris Gurnell, for 32 years. “She doesn’t stop until she gets it done. She didn’t tell a soul about her breast cancer diagnosis before her wedding, so by the time she told us she already had a plan in place. All she needed from the family was love and support. We all loved on her.”
Scott-Gurnell said going through breast cancer treatment also helped Ash-Simpson realize she needed to return to her creative talents.
“Cheryl worked as an engineer for so long, but she hated it,” Scott-Gurnell said. “Once she finished her cancer treatment, she stopped doing it. I think she realized that life is short, and she wanted to do the things that she really loved.”
Ash-Simpson is currently working on an inspirational television show in which she interviews famous faces, such as Viola Davis and Tina Knowles Lawson, about overcoming life’s odds. She also wants to start a foundation to help support students of breast cancer survivors and of parents who have died of the disease.
She’s modeling now and and has even started to play the sax again after not playing for years. She is taking lessons with Johnny Gonzales, who has played with Dave Sandborn, Dee Dee Bridgewater and Aretha Franklin. For her 10th wedding anniversary this fall, Ash-Simpson and her husband plan to take a cruise from Barcelona.
“Whatever I thought 57 would feel like, I don’t feel like it. I feel effervescent and youthful. My mom always says, ‘The best is yet to come.’ I believe that.”