Ruth Freeman (Solomon) was born in 1908. When she was three years old, she and her family left the Ukrainian city of Kiev, which was part of czarist Russia. It was a long voyage to America. In the 1980s, she aided in raising funds for the restoration of Ellis Island and the Statue of Library, the lady with the torch in the harbor that she first saw when sailing to America, the “promised land,” as her grandmother called it.
She grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts, until her family moved to Freeport, New York. At Syracuse University she became a member of the Iota chapter of Alpha Epsilon Phi. The 1929 yearbook notes that she was also a member of Delta Sigma Rho, Y.W.C.A., Debate Team, Women’s Congress, Convocation Publicity Committee, Outing Club, Political Science Forum, and the German Club. She won the Delima-Fisher oratorical contest twice. She was also a charter member of the Syracuse chapter of Pi Gamma Mu, a national honor society for students in the social science. According to her obituary, she was the first female captain of the Debate Team, made Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated summa cum laude.
On March 3, 1930, she married Dr. Joseph Solomon, who had just completed his medical residency. The couple moved to Europe where they continued their studies in Berlin, Paris and Vienna. She earned a graduate degree in humanities at the University of Vienna.
The Solomons moved to San Francisco in 1939. She spent her time raising two sons, George and Daniel. A member of Congregation Emanu-El, she was active in community affairs.
Her foray into novel writing came along quite by accident. Described as a natural storyteller, she was on vacation in Big Sur. The gentleman she was telling a story to happened to be a publisher. Enthralled by the way she told the story, he asked if she could write the same way and asked for a writing sample. He evidently was impressed with her efforts and the result was her first book, The Candlesticks and The Cross. She was 63 years old when it made its debut. It is historical fiction set in Russia and it draws on her Jewish experience. The Eagle and the Dove and Two Lives, Two Lands completed the trilogy. The Ultimate Triumph is a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1974.
She continued to write articles. According to an obituary, “When she wasn’t writing, she filled her days with friends and acquaintances – among them Golda Meir, Robert Kennedy, Eleanor Roosevelt and Abba Eban.”
Ruth Freeman Solomon died of complications from cancer on August 12, 1996 at the age of 88.
