Miriam T. Friend, 98, passed away on Monday, September 28, 2015 at Stonebridge at Montgomery in Skillman, NJ. Miriam Friend was born and grew up in New Rochelle, New York, in Westchester County. She attended New Rochelle public schools and the
College of New Rochelle from which she graduated with a fine liberal arts education in 1937. As editor of the campus weekly newspaper Miriam was bitten by the writing bug that afflicted her through many years of publicity work and editing.

Job prospects were bleak out in the cold cruel world in the depths of the Depression. Miriam had worked in the college library (at 25 cents an hour) so decided to pursue this as a career and enrolled at the Columbia University School of Library Service, where she got an MLS in 1940.

Through the Special Libraries Association Miriam was hired as Librarian of the M. W. Kellogg Company, a large engineering corporation at 225 Broadway (now the Kellogg/Boot Halliburton subsidiary.) Establishing a library was an especially challenging task as the company became deeply involved in the war effort. For the Manhattan Project the company's Kellex subsidiary was responsible for the design and engineering of the Oak Ridge Tennessee plant for production of fissionable Uranium.

Through the war years, the group worked in high gear and secrecy, celebrated with mixed emotions the birth of the atom bomb. During her years at Kellogg, Miriam was active in the special Libraries Association and the technical libraries section of the American Chemical Society.

Miriam met her husband Leo Friend, a chemical engineer, at Kellogg and they were married a few weeks after the end of the War and were lucky in finding a tiny sublet apartment in Roselle, N.J. The first child, David, was born in 1948, followed by daughter Sarah, who was born in 1950.

After moving back to New Rochelle, and for the next 17 years, Miriam was a typical postwar homemaker/mother and chauffeur with a commuting husband and children.
In 1964, the Kellogg Company opened a large research complex near the north campus of Rutgers. With her husband Leo as new director of Engineering Research and Development, the Friend family decamped for New Jersey, settling in Rocky Hill - just blocks from today's Stonebridge.

With her children grown and in school, Miriam joined the staff of the Princeton Packet where, as arts editor, she created the art news column "Around the Galleries" that won a NJ Press Association award.

She was an early member of the Princeton Art Association, where she held several offices, and served on the Board of the Friends of the Princeton Art Museum.

In May 1973, Miriam's husband Leo was killed in an automobile accident on the Great Road in Princeton. He was en route to the Mobil research facility in Hopewell, where he was a consultant. After this tragedy, Miriam returned to work - first as a substitute teacher and school
librarian, then as an editor at Rutgers and finally at the Mobil Research and Engineering center in Hopewell, where she created and produced "The Mobil Engineer", a bimonthly magazine launched during the oil crunch years of the seventies and eighties.

This job took Miriam with her camera and hard hat to refineries and chemical plants in Japan, Norway, London, Scotland and many energy-centers in the US. It was a unique and exciting experience, fraught with many memorable incidents as an early business-woman traveler.
Miriam loved traveling the world. As an engineer's wife, she attended many international scientific congresses, lived in Madrid for four months as guests of the Spanish government and did some intrepid traveling for pleasure. Alone, she became an avid Elderhosteler.

Besides playing piano from age seven, Miriam was an avid watercolor painter. She was a member of the Garden State Watercolor Society and of Watercolorists Unlimited. She also exhibited in many solo and juried shows.

In April of 2004, Miriam moved to Stonebridge from Queenston Common in Princeton where she worked in the library and continued her love of art.

Miriam is survived by her son David from Boston, and his 4 children and her daughter, Sarah, from New York City.

A celebration of Miriam's life will be held on Tuesday, October 6, 2015 beginning 2PM at Stonebridge at Montgomery, 100 Hollinshead Spring Road, Skillman, NJ 08558 in the large auditorium.

Charitable donations can be made in Miriam's name to Planned Parenthood, the Salvation Army or Amnesty International.