Respect. That’s the common refrain heard from friends, colleagues and devotees remembering Norman Simon. Standing tall at 6 foot 3 inches, the longtime head of B’nai B’rith’s western regional office earned respect from all he met.
In his 89 years, Simon accomplished much and regretted little. The San Francisco native died Sept. 15 in a San Rafael hospital after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. It was one of the few battles he ever lost.
“He was a big man with a deep booming voice,” said his daughter, Carole Simon Mills of San Rafael. “He was a really strong presence, and when he talked to you there was no gray area. He was a black or white kind of guy.”
Simon worked for B’nai B’rith for 50 years, longer than anyone else in the history of the organization.
“He was a very powerful, steadfast man,” said Irving Abramowitz, a former B’nai B’rith chapter president and friend of Simon’s. “He was a man with tremendous respect from all over the B’nai B’rith community.”
His daughter suspects Simon’s powers and passions stemmed in part from a hardscrabble Depression-era childhood in San Francisco.
Raised in the Richmond District, Simon lost his immigrant father at the age of 10. He could have been lost to the streets, but a passion for basketball “saved him,” according to Mills. He played basketball for George Washington High School and for the B’nai B’rith youth organization, AZA, a connection that would later prove decisive.
During World War II he served in the Coast Guard. Around that time he met his wife to be, Frieda, on a double date. Though each was out with a different person that night, both realized they were the couple that belonged together.
That first date turned into the rest of their lives.
“From the time he met her, she was the girl for him,” noted Mills. “She was beautiful, popular, fun and he spent 65 years thinking he was the luckiest guy in the world.”
Frieda Simon also reintroduced her husband to Judaism, and in short order he found the perfect Jewish outlet for his talents. After volunteering as a coach for a local AZA basketball team, in 1945 he was offered a job working with B’nai Brith Youth Organization, AZA and its sister organization, B’nai B’rith Girls.
The kids he mentored never forgot him.
“Anyone who grew up here in AZA knew him,” recalled Sanford Weinberg, 75, of San Mateo, once under Simon’s tutelage and later a lifelong friend. “He was a mentor to thousands of kids. He was such an important person in the lives of the kids in the Bay Area, I don’t know how to compare him to anyone else.”
Eventually Simon rose to become executive director of B’nai B’rith District Four, which covered 10 Western states and British Columbia. He served in that post for decades, and according to his daughter, those were years of unprecedented growth for the organization.
During his tenure, despite the demands of job and family, the father of three children went back to college, earning a master’s in social work at U.C. Berkeley.
But family came first. Mills remembers riding in the car with her father, singing Broad-way show tunes together the whole time.
In 1975, B’nai B’rith relocated its Western district headquarters to Los Angeles, and the Simons moved south as well. In 1992, Simon was named Social Worker of the Year by the Western region of the National Association of Jewish Center Professionals, and in 1994 he was awarded B’nai B’rith’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
After he retired from B’nai B’rith in 1995, the Simons moved back to their beloved Bay Area, settling in San Rafael to be near family.
“He did not like retirement,” said Mills. “He was active and engaged, did a lot of volunteer work. He loved the 49ers and the Giants.”
Despite the death of his eldest son, Jeffrey, in 1993, and even when Parkinson’s disease began to take its toll, Simon remained “optimistic, cheerful, upbeat,” according to his daughter.
And that meant staying in touch with the people whose lives he affected. Even during his final months, when he had to get around in a wheelchair, Simon would meet with Weinberg and other former BBYO and AZA members at a local restaurant.
“We would meet once a month and Norm would hold court,” Weinberg said. “He was very active, always interested in helping other people. He was just a wonderful person.”
His daughter echoes the sentiment.
“Ask anyone that knew him,” she said. “If he was on your side, you simply didn’t need anybody else. He gave unfailing support. You absolutely could count on him.”
Norman Simon is survived by his wife, Frieda Simon of San Rafael, daughter Carole Simon Mills of San Rafael, son Mark Simon of Byron, and granddaughter Devon Mills of San Diego. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, Church Street Station, P.O. Box 780, New York, N.Y. 10008-0780.