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March 4, 2022

Marsha Friedman

Marsha Friedman was born and raised in Dallas. Her mother, Sylvia, was a Dallas native who grew up on Forest Avenue near PV Road, while her father, Saul Hutt, came from New York. Her grandparents included Fannie and Max Silberman, whose extended family lived across North Texas in places such as Fort Worth and Corsicana, and her maternal grandfather was a dentist in downtown Dallas. Marsha had a brother, Mitch, who died at seventeen of cancer, and a younger sister, Nikki, who died about four years before the interview. Her parents divorced when she was in high school.

Marsha graduated from Hillcrest High School and attended North Texas, and her family were members of Temple Emanu-El on Northwest Highway. After she and her husband Stan married, they moved to Baltimore, staying until 1972, when they returned to the Dallas area and were surprised to be shown houses in Plano, then still largely undeveloped. They raised three sons, including twins, and remained close to friends over the decades. She recalled with humor being caught during services by Rabbi Klein alongside her lifelong best friend, Hope Levine.

Marsha's mother was her greatest role model, working at the JCC and then for about ten to fifteen years at Golden Acres as a social worker alongside Dr. Herb Shore. Marsha and Stan became deeply involved in the Jewish community through BBYO around 1990, serving as advisors for roughly seven years and enjoying the work far more than her own reluctant teenage experience. She also worked at the Holocaust Museum beginning at the JCC and in retail and healthcare settings, including Kaiser Permanente intake. Over her life she witnessed enormous growth in the Dallas area and its Jewish community, watching it expand from a few synagogues to many congregations across the region.

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