Naomi Solomon was a “joy-spreader.”
“I don’t know if that’s a word, but I’ll put it that way,” said her mother, Lottie, of Los Altos Hills. “She exuded joy and people flocked to her. Some people know how to do that. Like President Clinton, who could work a room, she could work a room, too. It was a gift, and she was very easy to be with.”
Solomon, 52, appears to be one of the thousands of Americans — and an estimated hundreds of Jews — victimized in last week’s terrorist attacks. She is listed on the vast roll of missing persons, and her family isn’t holding out much hope for her survival.
As of press time, more than 5,400 are still missing from the World Trade Center attack. A number had Bay Area connections.
Solomon, a New York resident and vice president of business development for the S.F.-based Callixa Corp. software firm, was in the World Trade Center Sept. 11, participating in a trade show in the Windows on the World restaurant on the 107th floor of the north tower.
“She knew how to enjoy life,” said younger brother Mark Solomon, 48, a Redwood City attorney. “I think the words to describe her best would be ‘very kind.'”
Naomi, Mark and youngest brother Jed, 45, are the children of Herbert Solomon, a retired statistics professor at Stanford, and Lottie, a former choral director and musician. They grew up in the “only strictly kosher house at Stanford,” according to their mother. The family often shared the dinner table with visiting scholars and dignitaries such as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, as the university frequently arranged for visiting Jewish guests to dine with the Solomons.
All three siblings graduated from Gunn High School in Palo Alto and Stanford. The family attended Conservative Congregation Kol Emeth, where, according to her family, Naomi was the first bat mitzvah in Palo Alto.
“She read Hebrew quite fluently, and did a masterful service,” recalled her mother, who is now a member of Congregation Beth Am along with her husband. “It was quite a spectacle. She did beautifully, and it was an unusual job of davening the whole prayer, the whole service. She was knowledgeable, in other words.”
Fifteen years ago, after nearly four decades in the Bay Area, Naomi Solomon moved to New York City. However, because she worked for a San Francisco company, family members said she would be back in the South Bay at least once a month to visit. Lottie Solomon also treasured her trips to New York to visit her oldest child.
“We were always doing interesting things. We would just cover the Jewish Museum — that was one of my loves — and go out to the theater. We always loved to go to the theater. She was kind of a gourmet cook, so eating out was always a joy; she knew just where to go to get something special.
“She always said, ‘I think you’ll like this, Mom,’ that’s how it went. She was alive, that’s the word, very alive.”
One of the last conversations Lottie Solomon remembers having with her daughter was about Naomi’s newfound interest in the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Naomi had attended an August conference in Washington and hoped to do developmental work for the organization.
She had a special relationship with niece and nephew Jacob, 6, and Sara, 4, the children of brother Jed and his wife, Leslie.
“She’d come to town and the first thing she’d do is call him up and say, ‘Jake, what would you like to do with me today?’ And he’d say, “Aunt Naomi, how about you pick me up and we go for a walk down to the park and then I take you out to lunch?’ He couldn’t wait for her to come home,” said Lottie Solomon.
“The TV keeps blaring all the time, and he keeps saying, ‘Was my Aunt Naomi in that fire? I know she’s in New York, why doesn’t she call? She’ll always call even if she’s busy; I know her.’
“He lost a great friend.”
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