Communities thrive when dedicated residents show up again and again with big ideas and the means to make them happen. Bernice Friedland was that type of resident in Cumberland, Md., spending 80 years making the western Maryland community a better place to live. “My mother was a force of nature,” says Friedland’s daughter, Lynn Lazar. “She was a dynamic person who was very clear on how things should be, why things should be, and she just had a way of making the universe bend to the way she wanted them to be done.”

Friedland ’45 Edu and her husband, Arthur, owned the clothing store Tots to Teens for 30 years in Cumberland, where she was a champion of education and women’s rights. She chaired the Allegany College of Maryland Board of Trustees, philanthropically supported the Allegany Museum in Cumberland, and was a founding member of the Allegany College of Maryland Foundation, raising funds for the college. “She saw a need and just jumped in,” Lazar says. She also founded the county’s Adult Literacy Council, earned a master’s degree in modern humanities in her 70s, and was a Life Master bridge player.

Friedland was a founding member of the Allegany County Commission for Women; helped establish the Allegany County Women’s Refuge; and was the first woman to serve as president of her synagogue, B’er Chayim Temple, where she celebrated her bat mitzvah at the age of 76.

Predeceased by Arthur, Friedland (SDT) died Oct. 11, 2025, 12 days shy of her 100th birthday. Besides Lazar, she is survived by sons Stephen and Bruce, seven grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. —RR