Naomi Merker Gordon

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Naomi Gordon, beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, died on September 25, surrounded by her family, minutes before the start of the Jewish New Year.  She was born on July 25, 1930 to Eva and Samuel Merker, immigrants from Eastern Europe in the wake of World War I.  She grew up in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where her father had founded the Merker Counter Company, a maker of shoe components.

A precocious student, she entered Wellesley College at age 17, majored in philosophy, and graduated in 1951. At Wellesley, she met her lifelong partner Melvin Gordon on a blind date.  They married in 1950 and soon had three children, Andy, Betsy, and Billy. Through the 1950s and 1960s, Naomi worked energetically with the League of Women Voters and the Friends of the Newton Free Library, in what became a lifelong commitment to civic engagement.

Committed to learning, in the early 1960s Naomi earned a Masters degree in education from Northeastern. On that foundation she built a 28 year career of leadership and innovation in the Brookline Public Schools.  She began as a remedial reading specialist, and eventually rose to Director of Language Arts for Grades K-8.  She worked with colleagues to develop a new process-oriented approach for the teaching of writing. Their efforts bore fruit in a book she edited, Classroom Experiences: The Writing Process in Action (1984). She mentored generations of Brookline school teachers who carry on her legacy to this day.

Naomi’s thirst for knowledge led her back to school in 1979, when she earned a Certificate of Advanced Study from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  In 1985, she was awarded a Fulbright Teacher Exchange Scholarship to teach in an Oxford, England school district. She offered teacher training and supervision at Wheelock and Simmons colleges. With Naomi as co-director, Brookline Public Schools won three grants for National Endowment for the Humanities summer writing programs.  These drew teachers from across the country, the first time that a public school system was awarded these prestigious grants.

After retirement in 1995, she continued her lifelong commitment to education. She joined Teachers as Scholars (TAS) in 1996, a fledgling professional development program that offered K-12 teachers seminars led by university faculty. For 12 years Naomi’s critical leadership laid the groundwork for its continued success.  TAS came to include over 40 school districts and offer a wide range of classes in the arts, sciences, math and humanities as well as summer retreats, including a trip to Florence, working with the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, to study its iconic art and architecture.  In all her professional roles, Naomi was beloved and respected for her listening skills, intelligent feedback, and her well-timed quiet humor.

Growing up in a religious home, her Jewish identity was strong, and it deepened in the last decades of her life, when she became an active member, and to the end of her life a board member, at Temple Israel.  There, she was one of the founders of the Temple Israel Lifelong Learning Institute, and she was active in the temple’s social justice programs.  In her late 80s, she volunteered at the Women’s Lunch Place, Planned Parenthood, a visiting program at a women’s prison, and the Arnold Arboretum.

Naomi’s thirst for learning went beyond her professional life. She and Melvin traveled through much of Europe as well as to Japan, Egypt, India, Israel and China.  She was a voracious reader and participated in two reading groups until the last two years of her life.  After Melvin died in 2015, she traveled with the Road Scholars program to Southeast Asia, Panama, and the Amazon River, and to Cuba with daughter Betsy.  Finally, on her own at the age of 90 she made a memorable visit to Petra in Jordan.

Naomi loved Cape Cod beaches and swimming and kayaking on Eastman Lake in New Hampshire, and shared these pleasures with her beloved husband until the end of his life.  At age 70 she started a birthday tradition of taking on new challenges with her family: whitewater rafting, ballooning, jumping off a rope swing, and more.  She was adoring and proud of her children and grandchildren, and she inspired in them an adventurous spirit of engagement with the world.

She leaves son Andrew and daughter-in-law Yoshie, daughter Betsy and son-in law Colin, and son William and his partner Rachelle; four granddaughters, Jennifer and husband Luke, Megumi and husband Michael, Melissa, and Conna; and three great grandchildren, Mia, Kaya and Rio. Naomi was predeceased in 1979 by her sister Diane and beloved daughter-in-law Marcy in 1998.

Service will be held at Temple Israel, 477 Longwood Ave., Boston (parking on the Riverway), Thursday, September 29 at 11 am.  Burial at Adath Jeshurun Cemetery, West Roxbury, followed by reception, 2:30-5:30, at the home of Joan Arbetter Rosenberg.  On Friday and Saturday, friends and relatives are invited to visit the family at the home of Andrew Gordon from 2-4 pm and 7-9 pm.

Donations in remembrance may be made to the Diane Merker Writing Scholarship Fund at UMass Boston.

Donations in remembrance of Naomi Gordon may be made to the Diane Merker Scholarship Fund online via this link: alumni.umb.edu/merkerfund.  

If making a contribution by check, please make checks payable to UMass Boston and include “Merker Scholarship” in the memo line.  Checks can be mailed to:

UMass Boston
Attn: University Advancement
Healey Library, 11th floor
100 William T Morrissey Blvd
Boston, MA 02125