
The USO was particularly meaningful to her as, among other servicemen family members, her father served in WWI and her brother Stanley in WWII and Korea. Over the years, she worked with the Mills Hospital Auxiliary, the AIDS Project of San Mateo, Visiting Nurses Association, Temple Beth El in a variety of capacities, Samaritan House, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the SFO Museum, Travelers Aid and the SFO USO. Roma chose volunteer opportunities she was drawn to and where she felt a positive impact could be made. The couple were lifelong members of Temple Beth El in San Mateo, joining in 1957, and were fixtures in the local San Mateo community, with Marv serving as chief of pediatrics at both Mills and Peninsula hospitals for decades, and Roma volunteering widely. Roma raised two daughters and cared for her father, who had suffered a debilitating stroke, for seven years until his death in 1974, and also her mother as she aged until her death in 1989. Moving to the Peninsula in 1957, Roma helped Marv open his pediatric practice and supported him while he established himself as a clinical professor of pediatric cardiology at both UCSF and Stanford. while Marv completed his pediatric cardiology fellowship at UCSF. The couple then followed Marv’s older brother Alfred to San Francisco in 1956, where Roma worked for the S.F.

The couple lived in New York City while Marvin completed his residency in pediatrics at Columbia, and Roma continued her work on Wall Street. Marvin Auerback, a surgeon lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Navy, in 1952, and they were married at Marvin’s family home in Toronto in June of 1953. She was extremely proud of this work and held a lifelong passion and innate talent for investment banking and stock trading. She worked in the president’s office of Salomon Brothers and Hutzler, and in the investment department of American Express. Roma attended Central Commercial High School in Manhattan and upon graduation went to work on Wall Street. Roma was raised in Brooklyn among a large, lively and extremely colorful extended family led by her maternal immigrant grandparents Esther and Morris Pomerantz who arrived in NYC in 1898 from Galicia, and her paternal grandparents Meyer and Mary Roff who first arrived in NYC in 1886 from Brest-Litovsk. Shortly after birth, she was voted the “Prettiest Baby” in a competition among the hospital’s newborns and had her picture taken with a local prizefighter, which was published in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Roma Marie Roff was born at the Brooklyn Women’s Hospital to Millie (Mindel Pomerantz) and Edward (Abraham Roff). She faced life and the many challenges it presented head-on and with equanimity, grace and fortitude. Roma was a beauty who was also blessed with charisma, brains and a Brooklyn-bred, no-nonsense attitude.

Roma Marie Auerback April 16, 1932–Roma Marie Auerback
