Sally Friedman, prolific freelance writer and popular public speaker, has died at 86

Sally Friedman, 86, formerly of Moorestown, prolific freelance writer for the Burlington County Times, The Inquirer, and a host of other publications, popular public speaker, Holocaust chronicler, mentor, and onetime middle school English teacher, died Friday, Jan. 3, of complications from dementia at her home in West Orange, N.J.

From her first published story in 1964 to her retirement in 2022, Mrs. Friedman entertained, enlightened, and endeared herself to millions of readers through thousands of columns, feature stories, and restaurant reviews. She also made personal appearances during which she or another often read from her work and engaged with audiences.

South Jersey was her stomping ground, but her universal yarns about marriage, children, and life in general were also published in the New York Times, Ladies' Home Journal, the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series, and other outlets across the country. She used subtle humor and sentiment to describe life, often through deeply personal experiences with her husband, three daughters, and grandchildren.

She told tales of first dates and family vacations, revealed intimate emotions, and discussed her own triumphs and disappointments with clarity and detail. She shared her mother’s recipes and wrote a dozen stories for The Inquirer about the eclectic home decor of the region’s ambitious homeowners. Readers said her stories came across like intimate conversations between friends over coffee.

“Increasingly, I find myself turning to my three adult daughters for insight, ideas and, yes, advice,” she said in The Inquirer in 2006. “Of course, I attempt casualness when it happens, as if I’m simply ‘grazing’ around in their collective wisdom.”

In a 2018 Inquirer story about the first day of kindergarten, she said: “Loving a child is always commingled with blurred endings and beginnings. And I flunked ‘letting go’ big time.”

Mrs. Friedman’s longtime nationally syndicated weekly lifestyle column, “Lifesounds,” first appeared in the Burlington County Times in 1971, and she wrote hundreds of commentary pieces, first-person columns, and features for The Inquirer from 2000 to 2019. Her first published piece, in Babytalk magazine, was about the unexpected home birth of her second daughter, and one of her last stories for The Inquirer was a wistful tale of a memorable, if disappointing, weekend at the Jersey Shore.

She wrote a 2021 column about her sister, Ruth, for the Burlington County Times and said: “Ah, sisters! I loved mine, hated her, envied her, wanted her curls and her later bedtime than mine by a whole half hour.” A former colleague said in a recent tribute: “We should all be so boldly audacious about spreading the love we have for our family and friends.”

Mrs. Friedman taught writing classes to adults, spoke to community groups and others about her stories, and partnered with an actress and a singer in the 1980s to discuss, read, and play music to her work on stage. She wrote many stories about Holocaust survivors and recorded interviews for Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation.

“Writing was more than a career for her,” said her daughter Amy. “It was a genuine calling.“ Her daughter Jill said: “She said she had to write.”

» READ MORE: Everyone told us the old chair should be replaced, but we couldn’t let it go | Sally Friedman

In a 2006 Inquirer column about her high school days, Mrs. Friedman said: “Somewhere along the way, I realized that words were going to wrap themselves around me, for better and for worse.”

Sally Mae Schwartz was born in December 1938 in Philadelphia. She grew up in Wynnefield, academically tutored a young basketball star, Wilt Chamberlain, at Overbrook High School, and graduated in 1956.

She earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for a year in Willingboro as a middle school English teacher. She married Victor Friedman in 1960, and they had daughters Jill, Amy, and Nancy, and lived in Willingboro and Moorestown.

A lifelong reader who said online that she liked “all things literary,” Mrs. Friedman and her husband were active supporters of what is now Rowan College at Burlington County. Together, they enjoyed the theater, concerts, lectures, and lazy days on Long Beach Island.

“So many yearnings to protect. So many goodbyes at kindergarten doors, college dorms, wedding aisles, and when a truck pulls away with the worldly goods of a kid moving across the country.”

She also loved coffee cake, babies, and John Denver songs, her daughters said. She doted on her grandchildren. “She was liked by everyone,” her sister said, “and it was genuine.”

Her daughter Jill said: “She was tremendously vivacious, charming, curious, and very caring.” Her daughter Nancy said: “She wasn’t afraid of feelings or problems. She delved right in, rolled up her sleeves, and got her hands dirty right with you.”

Her daughter Amy said: “To know Sally was to love her.”

In addition to her husband, daughters, and sister, Mrs. Friedman is survived by seven grandchildren and other relatives.

A celebration of her life is to be held later.

Donations in her name may be made to Breakthrough T1D, 200 Vesey St., 28th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10281.