Sarah Lee Best

Sarah was born on September 13, 1991, to Truman and Insuk Best in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, as the youngest of three sisters. After living in Woodbridge, Virginia, and Jinhae, Korea, she completed most of grade school in Clarksville, Tennessee, and graduated as valedictorian at Northeast High School in 2009. She graduated summa cum laude from Vanderbilt University, where she met Daniel Solomon, through their love of classical studies. They married on November 20, 2018. Kerby, their rescue dog, is named for Cerberus, the guard of Hades. 

After college, Sarah joined Teach for America and worked as a math teacher in Memphis, Tennessee, at City University Schools, then returned to Nashville to teach at Pearl-Cohn Comprehensive High School. She graduated summa cum laude from Pennsylvania Law School in 2021. Her friends and colleagues describe her as “embodying compassion, extending both a gentle hand to those who have fallen and a raised fist against those who oppress. She worked tirelessly to advance equality, inclusivity, and representation.” She subsequently clerked for several judges before joining Wilkinson Stekloff in Washington, D.C. on October 14, 2024.

Sarah altered the world of all who came to know her through friendship, empathy, respect, and love. She was fiercely loyal, protective, and selfless.                     

Together, Sarah and Dan loved to run marathons, hike, travel, and binge-watch entire seasons of TV on the couch with Kerby; they spent every weekend and every vacation together for six years of long-distance marriage as they prepared for their life together in DC. But Sarah remained devoted to her family, and the daily lives of the sisters were intertwined to the end. They relied on each other for their different strengths.

Sarah always said that death would be like a long nap. 

Sarah Best is survived by her husband, Daniel Solomon; their dog, Kerby; her parents, Truman and Insuk Best; her sisters, Jennifer Best and Jessica Haynes; and her niece and nephews Noah, Aria, and Jun.