Richard L. Friedman, former business manager of the old News American newspaper, died Saturday at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson of complications of a broken hip. He was 90.
The son of Meyer Friedman, a Baltimore Transit Co. investigator, and Grace Friedman, a Red Cross volunteer, Richard Lee Friedman was born in Baltimore and raised on Loyola Southway in Lower Park Heights.
After graduating in 1943 from Forest Park High School, he enlisted in the Navy. After completing training as a pharmacist mate at the Bainbridge Naval Hospital and at Camp Lejune, N.C., he served in Hawaii and the Philippines with the 83rd Seabees Battalion.
His unit was later transferred to Tientsin and Tsing Tau, China, where he served for six months with the 96th Seabees Battalion.
Discharged from the Navy with the rank of pharmacist mate second class, he enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, from which he earned a degree in 1950 in psychology and sociology. He earned a law degree in 1967 from the University of Baltimore School of Law.
In 1959, Mr. Friedman went to work as a credit manager at the News American, eventually becoming the newspaper's business manager in 1978.
His many duties included negotiating the labor contract with 14 unions at the paper, and he later played a key role in closing contracts with the unions when the News American ceased publication in 1986.
"I remember my mother calling me in New York to say that he literally turned off the lights and locked the doors," said a son, Drew Friedman of Bentonville, Ark.
After retiring in 1987 from the Hearst Corp., which owned the paper, he worked in human relations for the American Bank Stationary Corp. and was later a hearing officer for the Maryland Department of Corrections.
He retired a second time in 1989.
The longtime Idlewylde resident was married in 1955 to the former Dorothy Marie Harbaugh, a bank teller. She died in 2011.
Between 1988 and 1989, Mr. Friedman accumulated 1,225 volunteer hours with the American Cancer Society.
He was an inveterate painter.
Mr. Friedman was a communicant of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church, Baltimore and Ware avenues, where a Mass of Christian burial will be offered at noon Monday.
In addition to his son, Mr. Friedman is survived by another son, Brian Friedman of Baltimore; a daughter, Mary Patricia Friedman of Baltimore; and a grandson.