Thursday, April 01, 2010
School Choice Advocate
Special Edition: Rose D. Friedman (1910-2009)
On the morning of August 18, 2009, our dear friend and founder Rose Director Friedman passed away from heart failure.
Her quick and incisive wit, along with her intellect, humor and passion helped her successfully bridge the worlds of academia with her career as a devoted wife of 68 years, mother and grandparent.
Like Milton, Rose Friedman will be remembered both as a trained economist and lover of liberty. Her work—especially in the 1980s—helped shape and guide the modern free market movement. In her own unique way, she stood firmly for individual choice and firmly against government control.
Rose Friedman attended Reed College and then transferred to the University of Chicago where she received a Bachelor of Philosophy degree. She continued her training in economics at the University of Chicago, completing all the work for a Ph.D. except for writing a thesis.
She was on the staff of the National Resources Committee (Washington, D.C.), working on a nationwide study of consumer purchases, and continued work on that study at the Bureau of Home Economics. She also was on the staff of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and then the National Bureau of Economic Research. She then continued economic research on her own, publishing a pamphlet, Poverty—Definition and Perspective, and a series of twelve articles entitled "Milton Friedman—Husband and Colleague" in the Oriental Economist (May 1976 to August 1977). The series was also published as a book in Japanese.
She collaborated with her husband on three books on public policy that have received wide attention and circulation: Capitalism and Freedom, published in 1962, Free to Choose, 1980, and Tyranny of the Status Quo, 1984. She also served as associate producer of the PBS television series, "Free to Choose." The two also collaborated on their memoirs: Milton and Rose D. Friedman, Two Lucky People, which was published by the University of Chicago Press.
She received an honorary LL.D. in December 1986 from Pepperdine University.
