The Legacy of Elisa Simon

By Ellen Marks

It must have seemed like she was everywhere.

Elisa Simon was a dynamo who touched nearly every major Jewish organization in Albuquerque, helping to start some of them and lending inexhaustible support to others.

“She helped make the Jewish community what it was,” says Harold Albert, longtime patriarch and fundraiser for Jewish causes in Albuquerque. “She was fabulous in every way.”

From her initial work with a friendship club for Jewish seniors to Soviet missions to fundraising events that featured famous performers, Elisa will be remembered for her “many remarkable accomplishments,” says Ron Segel, then president of the Hillel board, who served with her in a variety of capacities over the years.

Elisa Merle Simon died on July 6 in Brookline, Mass., where she was living with her husband, Toby Simon. She was 77.

In her memory, Simon is creating a fund that aims to cultivate the next generation of Jewish leaders in New Mexico.

The Elisa Simon Jewish Leadership Scholarship Fund will be dedicated to such things as leadership conferences and professional training; certificate and degree programs in Jewish communal leadership or nonprofit management; and the funding of out-of-state speakers and programs, says Sarah Winger, executive director of the Jewish Community Foundation of New Mexico. The fund will begin offering grants in fall 2027.

“I want people to remember her as a very caring, wonderful person who devoted herself to building a strong Jewish community in Albuquerque and New Mexico,” Simon says.

Maybe just as important to some, Elisa Simon — avid reader of mysteries and skilled maker of chopped liver – was a solid friend and a very good lunch pal.

“She helped a lot of people through hard times in their personal lives,” says Mimi Efroymson, also a prominent community leader and volunteer.

From Volunteer to Executive Director

Elisa first arrived in Albuquerque with her husband in 1977. The two had met through their work at Temple University in Philadelphia: she was a medical social worker and her husband-to-be was doing his medical residency.

She grew up in a religiously conservative home in which the family kept kosher, and that might have been the foundation for her later and lasting dedication to Jewish organizations, Simon says.

The friendship club, part of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, was the first volunteer work that Elisa jumped into in Albuquerque, using her skills as a social worker to create a gathering place for Jewish seniors. 

For that, she won a state outstanding volunteer award under then-Gov. Bruce King, which she collected during an event at the governor’s mansion. 

She also won the admiration of the Federation, which had nominated her for the award.

In the way of non-profit volunteer work everywhere, the organization asked her to help out “one day a week, then two days a week,” says her husband. That progressed to part-time employee, then full-time employee until she finally served as executive director from the early 1980s to nearly the end of the decade.

Segel, at the time a Federation board member, recalls that Elisa’s immersion in the Jewish community made her valuable when it came to allocating money because she was "knowledgeable about all those organizations.”

“She was very, very devoted and very industrious,” says Segel, a past president of the Jewish Community Center who now serves on the boards of the JCC and the Jewish Community Foundation. “It was a delight, because she was so knowledgeable.”

Jennie Negin, also a longtime volunteer and organizer, put it this way:  “She just was everything you wanted in an executive director. She set a mark that no one after her could even take a baby step toward.”

Building Shalom House

Running the Friendship Club had made Elisa aware of the need for low-cost housing, her husband says, and she conceived of the Shalom House as a first step toward an eventual Jewish Community Center.

She worked hard on the application for funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the David Specter Shalom House. It was the early Reagan years, and the administration opposed federal money for low-cost housing. Elisa worked closely with both of New Mexico’s U.S. senators, Republican Pete Domenici and Democrat Jeff Bingaman, and their staffs to get the project funded.

Domenici, who had good relations with the Reagan administration, was able to ease the way when the project stalled, Toby Simon says.

Both senators attended the groundbreaking on the site, a ceremony Elisa organized.

Decades later, the house she helped build is still giving back. Its recent sale to a private housing company has generated about $4 million for Albuquerque Jewish organizations, including $1.3 million for the Jewish Community Center. (See “They Never Dreamed of This: The Shalom House Sale Becomes a Gift to the Whole Albuquerque Jewish Community.”)

Elisa also had a knack for welcoming newcomers to the Jewish community and getting them involved.

“Elisa was the first person I met when I first moved to Albuquerque,” says Jane Wishner, board chair of the Jewish Community Foundation. “She was warm, embracing, and made me feel part of the community immediately.”

During further work with Elisa, it was clear that “she was smart and savvy. She understood the politics of Jewish institutions and communal life and navigated them with grace,” Wishner says.

Pressed Into Service Again

Toby Simon says he and his family moved to Scottsdale, Ariz., in 1990. Elisa became the regional director of the Jewish National Fund there and held a similar position when they moved to Atlanta. The couple had three children.

Upon their arrival back in Albuquerque in 2001, Simon became chief medical officer of Tricore Reference Laboratories and Elisa was pressed into service once again. She became a volunteer co-director of the Federation because it was absent a leader.

She shared the temporary job for several months with Vivian Skadron, who had been a Federation director in Indiana but hadn’t yet become familiar with Albuquerque.

“I would say she did more of the important work,” Skadron says. “I was handling other things that I could do because of prior experience. She was a good leader and a hard worker. She knew the community very well.”

It was Elisa who saw the need for a Jewish Family Service and helped the agency off the ground, says her husband, who once served as president of the Federation. 

Basically, since there was no Jewish Community Center, Elisa was trying to create a center “without walls,” her husband said, meaning a constellation of services and programs that would act as the glue for the state’s small Jewish population.

When the Federation shut down in 2022 because of a lack of funding and internal conflict, Elisa saw it as “a big disappointment,” her husband says.

But it wasn’t all about leadership or fund-raising for Elisa Simon, and it wasn’t all about just having a local focus.

Elisa’s portfolio in the Albuquerque Jewish community expanded to include public school appearances to teach about the celebration of Hanukkah and about the Holocaust. 

She co-chaired the first New Mexico Humanitarian Awards celebration, which has since become an annual event sponsored by the Jewish Community Center to “celebrate … extraordinary individuals.”

Elisa Knew How to Throw a Party

And then there were her fundraisers! It was clear Elisa knew how to throw a party.

In 2002, Hillel at UNM had a new home, the Aaron David Bram Hillel House, a gift from Mel and Paula Schwartz. What it needed was a bigger budget.

Elisa’s answer was a gala awards dinner. Never mind that Hillel had no tradition of such events. She invented the awards too, and called them the Lech Lecha Awards.

“The event was a great success and attracted a large crowd for an elegant evening at the JCC on April 27, 2002,” Segel says. “No detail was overlooked.”

Beyond the beautiful dinner and a comprehensive program, Elisa commissioned Judaica artist Diane Palley to make a silkscreen for each honoree. And when the party was over, every recipient got a commemorative notebook: photos from the evening, a card signed by the whole board, and personal letters of congratulations from Hillel International leaders Edgar Bronfman and Richard Joel, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, Reps. Tom Udall and Heather Wilson, Gov. Gary Johnson and Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez.

“I can’t begin to imagine how many hours Elisa must have devoted to taking charge of the planning and execution of the awards dinner,” Segel says.

“Whew.”

At another fundraiser, she managed to bring in beloved Jewish comedian Henny Youngman. Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary fame) came to a Hanukkah celebration, while his fellow singer, Mary Travers, was drawn to another of Elisa’s interests: the resettlement  of Soviet Jews. Travers came for a rally, Simon says, because she was involved in the issue of helping Jews who were fleeing the Communist world before and after the Soviet Union fell in 1991.

Negin recalled working with Elisa to help resettled families make a new home in Albuquerque.

“We had a few Soviet families we got apartments and furniture for, and we helped them settle in,” Negin says. 

It was a dog, she recalls, that won their hearts when it came to one of the first families they assisted. “We thought, ‘Anyone who brings their dog from Russia is special.’” 

Toby Simon says his wife also arranged missions to Israel, including one that started out in Hungary.

“The idea of the mission was to see the old world and the Jews who were sort of hanging on in Europe, and then go to Israel and (see) the great promise of the future,” he says. 

Chopped Liver and Enchiladas, Green

But professional accomplishments don't tell the full story of who Elisa Simon was.

For example, the chopped liver. “There were people who waited in line — well, not literally, but a lot of people loved it,” her husband says.

Elisa would cook for the Jewish holidays, and she liked music – perhaps a reflection of her time spent in the choir in college, he says.

Negin recalled Elisa bringing her children to Negin’s house to swim and “that was sweet.”

Efroymson says the two became close as they worked on fundraising together. 

“Fundraising requires getting out there and (letting) people know what you’re doing,” she says. “It’s a lot more than just making a phone call and asking for money because people have to know who you are.”

Elisa was tireless: “She was very efficient and she got things done. She just kept going.”

Efroymson recalled that when her husband was dying from cancer at a young age, Elisa  was “warm and caring” and a helpful confidante, probably due to her years as a social worker.

In later years, Elisa was having health problems and “it was good for her to go out,” so  the two would have lunch together, Efroymson recalled.

Most likely, it would be at The Range Cafe. And most likely, she says, it would be enchiladas. Green.

Says Efroymson: “I was lucky to have her as a friend.” 

Ellen Marks has been a journalist for more than four decades, including stints in Boise, Idaho, Seattle and Albuquerque. She came to the Albuquerque Journal in 1986 and retired from there seven years ago, but continues to do regular assignments for the newspaper. Her work for the New Mexico Jewish Journal has won multiple top awards from the American Jewish Press Association and the Society of Professional Journalists.

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