Harold W. Freeman Sr., retired senior school administrator, teacher, philanthropist, and veteran, has died at 103

Harold W. Freeman Sr., 103, of Philadelphia, retired senior administrator and teacher for the School District of Philadelphia, philanthropist, volunteer, and veteran, died Sunday, March 26, of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at Cathedral Village senior living center.

Unable to work as a private architect, his preferred profession, due to segregation and racism in the 1940s, ‘50s, and beyond, Mr. Freeman instead became the school district’s director of facilities and oversaw the maintenance, renovation, and construction of the city’s many schools in the 1960s and ‘70s.

He worked earlier as a master teacher and roster chair at the Masterman School for the Academically Talented, and industrial arts teacher and disciplinarian at now-closed Sulzberger Junior High School. Some of his students called him Big Red due to his red hair and 6-foot-2, 230-pound frame.

“He enjoyed working with young people,” said his son Harold Freeman Jr.

Religious and generous throughout his life, Mr. Freeman, to honor his late wife Jessie, partnered with the Chester County Community Foundation to form the Harold W. and Jessie L. Freeman Foundation in 2011. The fund supports charitable organizations that provide food, clothing, shelter, and health care to those in need locally, nationally, and internationally.

“Harold was committed to ensuring that people had access to basic needs,” officials at the Freeman foundation said in a tribute, “and his charitable giving has touched countless lives, now and forever.”

He also volunteered and contributed to charitable, educational, and social programs at Cheyney University, Safe Harbor of Chester County, and the American Cancer Society of Delaware County. “When you give to others you get much joy in return,” Mr. Freeman said on the Freeman fund website.

He organized soup kitchens and other community outreach events for decades at Tindley Temple AME Church in South Philadelphia and later was active at the First Presbyterian Church of West Chester. He also served for a time as chair of the zoning hearing board of Thornbury Township.

“There is something about Harold that makes it so easy to want to help him” a charity collaborator said in a tribute. “He is luminous.”

Mr. Freeman was drafted into the segregated Army in 1944, served in the Philippines in World War II, and rose to the rank of technical sergeant before his discharge in 1946. “Harold was a warm and loyal friend, a man of great faith and strong character,” a friend said in an online tribute. “He walked his talk on a daily basis.”

Harold Wadsworth Freeman Sr. was born Dec. 4, 1919. He grew up in South Philadelphia and graduated from Central High School in 1937. He was a lineman on the football team at what is now Cheyney University and worked in the school’s boiler room to pay his tuition.

He studied industrial arts and earned a bachelor’s degree from Cheyney in 1942. In 1964, he received a master’s degree in secondary education at Temple University.

He met Ophelia Greene in high school, and they married, and had son Harold Jr. After a divorce, he married Jessie Lynch in 1967. She died in 1984, and he married and divorced Dorothy Bell, Harriett Jones, and Justine Crumley. They all died earlier.

Mr. Freeman lived in West Philadelphia, Berwyn, Glen Mills, and West Chester before moving to Cathedral Village in Roxborough. He enjoyed gardening, filled his home with plants, and often went to the gym three times a week into his 90s.

He attended several Bible study classes, went on meditation retreats, and was known around Cathedral Village as the president. “I’m not rich,” he said on his foundation’s website. “But I’m rich in God’s blessing.”

In addition to his son, Mr. Freeman is survived by a grandson, four great-grandchildren, and other relatives. Three brothers and three sisters died earlier.

His interment was April 3 at Valley Forge Memorial Gardens in King of Prussia.

Donations in his name may be made to the Harold W. & Jessie L. Freeman Foundation, c/o CCCF, 28 W. Market St., West Chester, Pa. 19382.