Erika and Dr. Lew Schon
Flexibility and respect have been key to Erika and Dr. Lew Schon achieving a work-life balance.
She’s a Wall Street banker-turned-Krieger Schechter Day School middle school choir director and conductor of the Baltimore chapter of HaZamir: The International Jewish Teen Choir. She’s also an active lay leader, including her current role as board president for Acharai: The Shoshana S. Cardin Leadership Development Institute.
He’s a world-renowned orthopedic surgeon, director of foot and ankle services and the foot and ankle fellowship program at Union Memorial Hospital, and a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
The Schons, who live in Pikesville, have five sons. With their sons now grown, Erika and Lew fondly remember the early years of their family life.
“They used to have two dinners — an early dinner with me, and then when Lew came home, they would eat again with him,” Erika recalls. “Then, we’d start the bedtime ritual again. I didn’t mind. I loved seeing them with their dad.”
She admits it wasn’t always easy getting the boys up for school in the mornings. It helped that Lew didn’t require much sleep.
“Lew is the best late-night person. He can work a 15-hour day and come home in a great mood, and ready to be with the kids,” she says.
Says Lew: “When the kids were little and I came home from work, it wasn’t like she’d be screaming, ‘Take this kid from me!’ She never chastised me for coming home late. Erika allowed me to do what I need and want to do. I have to see patients and do surgery, but I don’t have to do research, teach and lecture worldwide. But I want to do that and I feel it’s important to my mission.”
The Schons emphasize that much of their success individually, as parents and as a couple comes from their love of their professions and admiration for each other’s achievements.
“I have a few months during the year that are crash and burn,” says Erika. “I’m out four nights a week, and Lew knows he’s going to eat cereal sometimes.”
Yet Lew doesn’t mind. “She loves to do all these things, and I want her to be free to do all of it,” he says. “When she does a concert, for that class, those teachers, that nursing home, it’s a great moment and I’m really proud of her for that.”
Similarly, Erika enjoys hearing about Lew’s surgeries and research, as well as opening their home to his fellows and residents — who hail from all over the world — for Shabbat dinners and holidays. In many cases, she says, his students have never before visited a Jewish household. “After working with Lew and being in our home, they begin to understand Judaism,” Erika says. “He’s changing views on what Jews are like, one relationship at a time.”
Says Lew: “It’s nice that we both have our different spheres, and yet we’re not so far away from each other that we can’t understand. We can give each other good counsel.”
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