Crash Victim’s Unique Outlook Recalled

Under a beautiful sunny sky with the Pacific Ocean filling the horizon, friends and family of Jack Sims gathered Tuesday to celebrate his life, lost so suddenly last week in a private plane crash next to the Santa Ana Auto Mall.

Sims, 47, a Placentia public relations and marketing consultant, was among five people, including the two top executives of the In-N-Out Burger chain, killed in the crash last Wednesday.

About 250 people attended the private memorial service at the Dana Point Resort, marked by music, prayers and fond recountings of “Jack stories.”

“It was a perfect picture,” said Terry Sheppard, a friend who often helped Sims create video productions for In-N-Out and other clients. “Jack had on his business card that he was a ‘horizon monitor.’ He always liked to identify himself as a futurist. He truly was. . . . He was a very uniquely different person. He touched a lot of lives.”

Sims was a close friend of In-N-Out President Richard A. Snyder, who had chartered the ill-fated aircraft, and produced a monthly video news program called “Burger TV” for the 2,500 In-N-Out employees.

In addition to Sims, the crash claimed the lives of Snyder, 41; In-N-Out Executive Vice President Philip R. West, 37; pilot Stephen R. Barkin, 46, and co-pilot John O. McDaniel, 49. No one was hurt on the ground.

Friends said Sims had a great sense of humor and described him as a great communicator and teacher, dedicated to reaching his generation on spiritual matters.

Sims, a native of Fort Worth, and a former minister ordained by the Evangelical Church Alliance, an interdenominational group, traveled the country with the Campus Crusade for Christ in the 1960s and 1970s.

More recently he had made a video seminar for churches called “A Generation on the Doorstep: Meeting the Spiritual Needs of Baby Boomers and Their Families.”

He had become something of an authority on baby boomers and religion and had appeared on ABC-TV’s “Nightline,” the Cable News Network and the “700 Club.”

Sims is survived by his wife, Helen; children, Amy and Jonathan; parents, Jack Sr. and Louise Sims; a brother, James P. Sims; and a nephew, James W. Sims.