Gary and Linda have been supported by Bethel Grove for 45 years. Gary studied linguistics and computer science at Cornell with Dr. Joseph Grimes as his Ph.D. supervisor. In the early days, Gary and Linda did language survey and then began a translation program in Solomon Islands, before being asked to relocate to the international headquarters in Dallas to lead language software development efforts.
As they make strategic decisions, many organizations in the Bible translation movement rely on the Ethnologue–a catalog of information about all the world’s languages. Gary has been Executive Editor of the Ethnologue (ethnologue.com) for more than 20 years, a job Barbara Grimes had for three decades. The 3-letter codes that Ethnologue uses to identify languages were the brainchild of Dr. Joseph Grimes and under Gary’s leadership these codes became an international standard (ISO 639) in 2007. They are now used throughout the Internet for identifying what language a web page is written in.
Gary has recently traded places with his Assistant Director of the Pike Center for Integrative Scholarship (pikecenter.org), handing over leadership of this program to a younger colleague. The aim of the Pike Center is to build capacity for scholarly research within the organization and to pursue research on strategic problems that have been prioritized by organizational leaders.
Gary and Linda have reached retirement age, but are not yet ready to retire since they continue to enjoy their work and their colleagues. They can be reached by cell 972-296-3105 or e-mail: linda.simons@gmail.com, gary_simons@sil.org.