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Sunday, June 29, 2003

By Jeffrey Cohan, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Journalist and author and Judith Friedberg, a Pittsburgh native and consummate Bohemian, toted her red-leather luggage around the globe, entertaining readers with accounts of her travels and spoiling nieces with exotic gifts.

The former "Time" and "Travel +Leisure" magazine writer was described on one of her book jackets as an "indefatigable globetrotter."

"It was so exciting when we were little," niece Susan Kalson said, recalling her aunt's visits. "She was magical."

Miss Friedberg died Wednesday, at the age of 82, after a long battle with heart disease.

In the era of "Ozzie and Harriet," Miss Friedberg was collecting art, going to theater, and keeping a Manhattan apartment.

After graduating from Taylor Alderdice High School, Miss Friedberg went to Radcliffe College, then the sister campus of Harvard. There, she majored in political science and became active in the movement that pressed the United States to enter World War II.

"She recognized that the Nazis were a deadly enemy and that the Jews were imperiled," said her sister-in-law, Joan Friedberg of Squirrel Hill.

After graduating from Radcliffe in 1942, she worked for the Board of Economic Warfare, a federal agency that monitored the health of the German economy; the American embassy in London, and then as a civilian employee of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

Upon returning to the U.S., she began her journalism career, working on the staff of Time Magazine, where her liberal views clashed with the conservatism of her editors.

"She didn't particularly get along with her bosses," said her nephew, Aaron Friedberg of Princeton, N.J.

While she never lost interest in politics -- becoming a CNN junkie later in life -- her career gravitated toward her primary passion, travel.

Miss Friedberg worked for several years as a free-lance travel writer and in 1960 authored two books on shopping in foreign countries, guides stuffed with practical details and leavened with snappy writing.

She offered this tip about traveling in Muslim-dominated Iran: "If you are female, do wear a form-concealing coat!"

As for shopping in Moscow: "Let's not beat about the bush. There is really very little to buy in Soviet Russia. And what there is, with a few exceptions, is usually shoddy and exorbitant in price.

Ultimately, she landed a plum job with a start-up magazine called "Travel + Leisure," which would blossom during her long tenure there into one of the premier periodicals in the travel industry.

She traveled, wrote and edited for the magazine for some 20 years.

As an editor, "She had a meticulous eye for error," Joan Friedberg said.

She never married, turning a downseveral offers.

"She was very independent," Kalson said. "She took pride in not being domestic, not cooking or cleaning or being married."

With her health failing, she returned to her native city two years ago, spending the rest of her life at the Charles M. Morris Nursing and Rehabilitation Center.

Miss Friedberg is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, Simeon and Joan Friedberg of Squirrel Hill, two nieces, Susan Kalson of Squirrel Hill and Betsy Friedberg of Melrose, Mass; and a nephew, Aaron Friedberg.

She was interred Thursday at West View Cemetery of Rodef Shalom Congregation.