Solomon shared that just 10 weeks ago, he first met one of seven siblings he had never previously known existed – a man named Damon, who at 50 is just one year his senior.
“How do we go our whole lives and just meet 10 weeks ago?” he said.
“Well, at one level, it’s a very simple story. We share the same biological father,” Solomon said. “We have different mothers. We grew up with our mothers, mostly in different families, in different parts of the country … never had a chance to meet. But when you’re talking about families, it’s always more complicated.”
Solomon grew up in New York with his biological mother and the man he “considered Dad,” along with five other siblings, two adopted, in “a dysfunctional but wonderful home.”
Despite having a “good life,” Solomon, at age 21, itched to find his biological father. This was the predigital age, so he was left checking newspaper obituaries.
A Letter and No Response
“Fast-forward a little bit … 1994, I’m trained on a news clipping service, kind of like the Stone Age precursor to Google LexisNexis machines, and what do I search for with my 10 free hours of training? I search for the name I’ve known my whole life and learned a lot. Tracked him down. Wrote him a letter. Didn’t get a response, so I went to find him.”
The one and only face-to-face meeting between father and son would be anticlimactic. “Despite all my myth-making and fantasies, it was just a man,” Solomon said. “He was, frankly, as cautious as he may have been courageous, as fearful as he may have been ferocious. I don’t think he knew what to do with me. I don’t think I knew how to ask the questions that he knew how to answer.”
