Remembering 9/11: Lottie Solomon's Garage Full of Boxes

Editor's note: As the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, approaches, Patch explores how lives have changed in our communities in the past ten years. Read more about Lottie's story of her daughter, Naomi Solomon.

Around 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Lottie Solomon had just turned on her television in her Los Altos Hills home.

There was a knock at the door, and her two grown sons, both lawyers in their weekday suits, came in. They stood awkwardly in the den where the TV news was showing unfathomable pictures.

"Mother," one of them said, "Naomi was in the first building."

Naomi, her eldest, and only daughter. Naomi, New York-born, Los Altos Hills-raised, Gunn High School graduate, pianist "par excellence." Naomi, who was the first of their three children to go to Stanford University. 

Naomi Leah Solomon, 52, was vice president for business development at software company Callixa. She had a beautiful apartment on 56th Street and loved living in the city that had been her parents' whole world before they were lured out to California. She was attending a conference at Windows on the World on the 106th floor that morning.

“It still didn’t register,” she said.

Her neighbor, Phyllis Koch, arrived. "Oh, darling," Koch said, voice full of concern. "This is too much for anyone." A beat passed. 

“Then I started shrieking.”

In the garage, there are boxes that take up half the garage. Some of them are the papers of her late husband, Herbert, a beloved mathematics professor at Stanford University.

The rest are Naomi’s clothing, personal effects, sent from Manhattan. In 10 years, Lottie Solomon hasn't had the heart to open them.

"There is no recovery for parents who lose their children," she said simply.  She's 87 now. 

"Ten years, one year, 20 years later, it doesn't matter.”

Her son, Mark, is going out to New York for the memorial. She's staying in California.

Remembering a woman of substance

The den that Solomon inhabits is full of Naomi's presence. She points to a colorful table and chest that Naomi purchaed in Morocco, and an end table were hers. There's a painting that Naomi purchased, not long before the attacks. 

And prominently in the room is a portrait of Naomi that her neighbor, Phyllis Koch painted from the photograph that sits on a coffee table.

Naomi came to California from New York City at age 7, when her father, Herbert Solomon accepted an invitation to Stanford, where he helped found the statistics department.

The family forged a Jewish life in suburban California. They were close. Her brothers, Mark and Jed, "didn't make a move without her."

"She had a very fine Hebrew education," said Solomon. She was the first bat mitzvah at the Kol Emeth Congregation in Palo Alto, where they were one of the early families. Lottie Solomon, a conductor and a violinist, taught chorus. 

In 2004, her husband Herbert died. Big Daddy, they called him on Stanford campus where he was a popular professor, his obituary in J Weekly observed. He'd helped found the statistics department. He had Parkinson's disease, and Naomi's death was hard on him. "It was hard for me, I found out what the human being can withstand."

Before her death, Naomi had gotten involved with the Simon Wiesenthal Center and had planned to volunteer there. "It's too bad we have a world of haters," Solomon said. "There are people who hate others—whether you are too tall, or a different religion, or whatever. It spoils the world."

Naomi enjoyed every minute of life in New York, and the rich cultural offerings there were. She was gregarious. She traveled widely. "But she never missed a day without calling," Solomon said. "Girl talk. Job talk. She'd call from the Pyramids and we'd have a conversation about Egypt."

That morning on September 11, Solomon didn't pick up on the fact that Naomi hadn't called yet. It was still early in California.

Even ten years later, she said, the enormity of that morning in the very same den, doesn't register, she said.

"I think she jumped out," Solomon said. It was an inferno in there. "A lot of people jumped—I actually think I saw her. Maybe it's wishful thinking." 

They never recovered her, not a bone, not a piece of jewelry, not a scrap of clothing from that day, Solomon said. They have a flag, that flew from the nation's capitol. And a copy of the Congressional Record, where her name appears.

U.S. Rep Anna Eshoo (D-Menlo Park) came to the memorial service.

There is a scholarship in her memory. Solomon gets letters from the recipients every so often. "It's a wonderful, positive thing that came out of the horrible story," she said.

"I just want people to remember her," Solomon said. "Try to foster love."

In 2011

And what of the future?

"Of course I'm hopeful," she said. She pointed to the shelf crowded with frames of her grandchildren, all under Naomi's benevolent gaze. 

Her eldest grandson is 16 and drives over on his own to watch baseball and chat with her for hours on end. He does this all the time. 

"I get to enjoy him to the fullest," she said. "He happens to be a charming boy and a good student." 

She is his confidante. She hears what his parents might not. She knows this is rare.

“I told him last night, ‘I know you are a special gift to me,’” she said.