Whenever life was a little too uncertain and Deborah “Debbie” Cooper Simon didn’t know where to turn for help, she’d quip: “Jesus, can you get that?”

Simon’s unwavering faith was the “center of her joy,” said her daughter, Andrea Simon. She offered prayers for others freely, in good times and bad, and enjoyed working through problems with her loved ones and offering them advice.

She never pushed her Christian faith on others, her daughter said, but used it as a guiding light through her own life. She’d often walk through the streets of Baltimore, finding people in need and sitting to pray with them.

In her last months of life, when it was difficult to talk, her family returned the favor.

“That was my job, to start praying for her,” said her younger sister, Mary Tatum. “I know that was something that she always wanted to do, and I know that probably brought her peace as well.”

Debbie Simon, a Baltimore businesswoman, loving mother and dedicated community volunteer, died Aug. 1 after a long battle with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. She was 67.

Simon grew up in a bustling household, the fourth of six children born to William Frank Cooper and Lorraine Johnson Cooper Dukes. She and her siblings were primarily raised by their mother in Baltimore, and she shared a room with Tatum. In a family that big, there were certainly sibling rivalries, but their mother always told the kids: “No matter what happens, you all have to stick together.”

So they did, as children and adults. In her younger years, Simon took care of her siblings and encouraged them to go to church. Whenever Tatum had a school concert or another event, her sister was there. The kids played baseball and soccer with other children in the neighborhood and visited the local pool often.

Much of Simon’s childhood was also spent helping with household chores and learning to keep things organized, her sister said. She was a “princess,” Tatum said, always wearing the nicest pajamas and sewing pretty clothes for her dolls and cat. She kept her side of the room in tip-top shape, and when Tatum just shoved some of her things under the bed to “clean up,” her older sister would pull them right back out and tell her to do it the right way.

Simon was a proud alumna of Northwestern High School, class of 1976, where she was a cheerleader who had a “gift for gabbing,” her sister joked.

“She just had that personality where she would walk in the room and you knew that Debbie was in that room because she made herself known,” Tatum said.

After high school, she studied business at Morgan State University and later took classes at the Johns Hopkins University. She had many interests, but entrepreneurship was the root of all of them. Throughout her life, she held jobs at the Baltimore City Police Department, the Social Security Administration, Johns Hopkins and Farmers Insurance.

She independently decided to sell cosmetics for Mary Kay and Motives, then known as Market America. She practiced her makeup skills on Tatum.

She also worked as a church administrator for St. James A.U.M.P. Church, one of her favorite places, and served as a substitute and after-care teacher at Hope Academy. For about two decades, she ran a custom framing business out of her home whose slogan was: “Guilty of doing the best work in town.” Simon was always the artsy type, her daughter said.

When she wasn’t working, she was usually volunteering, whether it was for Baltimore City 4H or Mayor Brandon Scott’s campaign.

“It was fun,” Andrea Simon said of her mother’s vast career. “She didn’t let her feet stay grounded.”

But perhaps her most important job was as a wife and mother. She met Josef Simon through her sister in 1989, and their first date was at a Friendly’s restaurant. She brought her son, Chris, and her two goddaughters, and the couple “instantly hit it off,” Andrea Simon said.

They talked about their shared love of The Temptations and Earth, Wind and Fire and bonded over their cooking skills. Debbie Simon’s speciality was mac and cheese and sweet potatoes. Within months, they were married.

The couple loved raising their son, taking him to church and helping coach his teams. When Andrea came along, her mother taught her to do arts and crafts and savor museum exhibits. She also homeschooled her daughter throughout middle and high school.

She had “a passion for learning,” Andrea Simon said. “She loves children. I can’t say that that’s something that everybody has.”

Debbie Simon would sometimes give her kids pop quizzes on current events and made sure they knew how to behave politely in public, her sister said.

“They were her world, her two kids,” Tatum said. “When you saw Debbie’s kids, you knew they were Debbie’s kids, because Debbie liked to dress, so she always kept them looking good, and she always made sure that they were on top of everything, like education.”

Fashion was indeed one of Simon’s passions, as were dancing and having a good time with her friends and family. Her loved ones would often say that the party didn’t start until she arrived — or, more likely, after she arrived and said a prayer. She knew just about every line dance, so it was never difficult to pull her onto the dance floor to do the electric slide or the wobble.

After her son had children, Simon would let the grandkids stand on her feet and dance with them. She taught them her favorite songs and, of course, how to recite prayers.

It’s that legacy of faith, love and giving back that Simon has left to her family. When her daughter applied to graduate school, she wrote an essay about her mother titled “A Servant’s Heart.” She and her brother plan to establish a nonprofit foundation in their mother’s memory with the same name.

“She definitely had the core values of God, family and service,” Andrea Simon said.

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