In late 1982, Richard Simmons’ father, Leonard Simmons, scheduled a kidney stone removal. The operation took place despite Richard’s reservations. “I said, ‘Daddy, you’re 85 years old. Are you sure you want to have surgery?'” the younger Simmons wrote in “Still Hungry — After All These Years.”
After the procedure, Richard’s brother summoned him to return to the family’s home in New Orleans, as their father had suffered surgical complications that left him hospitalized. “There were tubes running everywhere, and he had lost a great deal of weight,” Richard recalled. “It was the hardest thing I’d ever faced.” Leonard was eventually discharged from the hospital and went home to convalesce. Perhaps sensing his imminent death, the elder Simmons, a Roman Catholic, made one final request of his celebrity son: to travel to Rome and meet the pope. Leonard wanted Richard and the pope to pray for him.
With the help of his publicist, Richard Simmons arranged a meeting and prayed with Pope John Paul II. A few months later, in April 1983, Leonard Simmons died, the night before Richard was scheduled to arrive in New Orleans to lead a 10,000-person aerobics session. The fitness personality was too depressed and grief-stricken to attend his father’s funeral. Meanwhile, the family faced another traumatic event that day — a New Orleans newspaper ran an article about the funeral, thereby announcing exactly when the Simmons’ home would be unoccupied. “Burglars broke in and took everything,” Richard explained.
