Anita T. Solomon

That’s my mom, Anita, on the right. She died this year on Oct. 25, and as you will see, she was one heckuva woman. That’s my sister, Lynne, on the left. She died in 1975. And oh, yes, that’s Jayne Mansfield in the middle. This 1962 photo depicts a grand opening event for the Detroit Thunderbirds bowling lanes that my mom organized. Taken at a time when Motown was hitting its stride and before the notorious Detroit riots, this snapshot captures my mom as a single, working mother of two who had recently moved to Detroit from the East Coast after her parents and former husband had all died untimely deaths and her New Jersey home had tragically burned down in a fire. In the years following this photo, my mom would marry, have three more children, lose Lynne to a car accident, survive breast cancer and, at the age of 50, earn the college degree she’d always wanted, which she would then use to become a top financial planner at one of the nation’s most pre-eminent financial-services corporations.