RECENT NEWS: Cyndi and I just competed in the Oklahoma City Memorial Marathon in Oklahoma City, April 25th. It was a great race, our first time to run in OKC. Read about it on my blog: Journal Entries

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As a petroleum engineer, marathon runner, backpacker, aggressive reader, teacher and writer, Berry Simpson has an avid love for learning. His experiences of a life lived for a purpose of teaching, can be easily identified by all ages in his writing and speaking style.

Berry is a published writer in Runner Triathlete News, Inside Texas Running, Rundown, Footnotes, Runner’s World, Baptist Standard Online, and Successful Marriages Online. Berry also writes a weekly essay entitled Journal Entries.

Born in Big Spring, Texas, Berry has a degree in Petroleum Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. He served on the Midland City Council for 13 years and is a deacon at First Baptist Church Midland, where he teaches a young-adult newly-married Bible study class, leads a weekly men’s study group, and plays trombone in the church praise band.

He has been in love with his wife, Cyndi, for over 30 years, and has a son, Byron, a daughter, Katie, and a son-in-law, Drew.


Want to know more? One morning in June 2009, Berry was thinking about Psalm 90:12 (“So teach us to number our days, that we may present to you a heart of wisdom.”) He went to work, numbering his days, and came up with this list:

19,366 = days I have been alive
16,800 = days since I was baptized
15,000 = days since I first picked up a trombone
11,900 = days I have been (verifiably) hot for Cyndi
11,300 = days since I was first certain I was in love with Cyndi
11,323 = days since I started running.
10,901 = days I have been married
10,489 = days I have been a father
8,976 = days since my first marathon.
8,552 = days since I first started tracking the books I read
7,839 = days since my marathon PR
6,800 = days since I first started teaching adult classes at church
6,784 = days I’ve run at least two miles.
5,494 = days since I was laid off for the first time
4,600 = days I have spent reading through the Bible
4,539 = days I rested from running
4,399 = days I served in city government
3,800 = days since I published my first Journal Entry
1,451 = days I have been a father-in-law
177 = days I have lived in our new house
17 = days I have spent on solo backpacking trips
11 = days I have spent hiking Guadalupe Peak
7 = days I’ve spent running marathons.
2 = days I spent conceiving children
1 = days I spent getting married
1 = days since my last run.
0 = days since I read my Bible
0 = days since I slept next to Cyndi

(Photo was taken during a run through Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, summer of 2006.)