From her home in Virginia, Kia Scherr talked to her daughter Naomi, who was in India this past week, about her SAT scores.
The 13-year-old, who once had lived in Maryland, ranked in the 92nd percentile for her scores.
The next morning, Scherr spoke to her husband, Alan, a former instructor at Loyola College in Baltimore, about Naomi’s potential scholarship at a New York boarding school.
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“They were enjoying each day to the fullest, and they loved the people, the color, the food of India. They were having the time of their lives,” Scherr said during a recorded news conference Tuesday in Virginia.
The next day, Nov. 26, Alan and Naomi died in a terrorist attack in which gunmen killed scores of people and held a city hostage for three days.
The attack began that day when 10 gunmen used assault rifles to gun down people at train stations, Jewish centers, hotels and cafes in Mumbai, India.
Alan Scherr and his daughter were in Mumbai for a spiritual retreat with Virginia-based Synchronicity Foundation, and staying at a hotel targeted by one of the terrorists.
Master Charles Cannon, spiritual leader of Synchronicity Foundation, a group that focuses on Eastern meditation techniques, was eating dinner in a hotel room with a friend when he heard the gunfire. His friend went to see what happened.
“He went out on the balcony and looked down into the lobby,” Cannon said. “He saw two terrorists with guns shooting everyone and everything. … We couldn’t believe it.”
Alan and Naomi Scherr were two of six Americans and 166 others killed in the attacks.
Alan Scherr’s brother, sister and mother live in the Baltimore area. Scherr had lived in Silver Spring before moving to the foundation’s headquarters near Charlottesville, Va.
Scherr taught basic photography at Loyola College for six years and was remembered by administrator Frances Fulton as a peaceful, caring man who could shoot a landscape picture to rival that of renowned photographer Ansel Adams.
“He was totally present with whomever he was with,” Fulton said, holding back emotions as she described Scherr. “Very few people live in the moment like he did.
“It’s ironic that a man who embodied peace would meet such a violent end.”
Kia Scherr said her emotions were like a roller coaster, going “from the deepest grief and pain I’ve ever known to the love and support I’ve received” from more than 800 people posting support letters on a tribute Web site to Alan and Naomi Scherr.
A memorial service was held Sunday at the Etz Chaim Center in Baltimore for the Scherrs and others who also were killed at the Chabad House, Rabbi Shlomo Porter said.
There were written remarks from Alan Scherr’s mother and a poem his wife wrote. A prayer followed.
The mourning and severity of the tragedy was so much for Porter that he did not want to comment on the memorial service or on the Scherrs.
As Kia Scherr mourned the loss of her husband and daughter with family in Florida during the Thanksgiving weekend, she looked into the night sky and saw nothing but two stars.
“We thought that was amazing. … It’s Alan and Naomi,” Scherr said. “Two bright lights, and their lights will shine forever. That is how I choose to remember them.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
