Extended Interview with Ruth Friendly
/The Full Interview Conducted by Film Director Lesley Topping for our Film, From the First Schoolhouse: A Scarsdale Story
Ruth Friendly, a former Scarsdale elementary school teacher and award-winning television producer, discusses her teaching career and her work with her late husband, Fred Friendly, a pioneer of broadcast journalism.
About Ruth Friendly
Ruth was raised in Manhattan by her parents Herman and Henrietta Weiss. Herman, a Bloomingdale's executive, had been with the company since 1914.
A graduate of Smith College (1945) and Teachers College, Columbia University (1957), Ruth Friendly’s first career was as a faculty member in the Scarsdale School District, where she taught and worked on curriculum development for over fifteen years. With husband Sandor Mark, she raised three children in the Quaker Ridge neighborhood. Son Jonathan Mark went on to serve as the Mayor of Scarsdale from 2015 to 2017.
Ruth’s students after a performance of their original play based on the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger. A true story based in colonial New York, the landmark legal case that established the foundations of freedom of the press in America. Credit: Ruth Friendly, 1982.
Widowed at an early age, she subsequently met and married Fred Friendly, and they merged their two families – six kids under one roof.
Ruth with husband Fred Friendly, a television producer and former president of CBS News. Photo Credit: Ruth Friendly
Ruth began her second career in 1982, working at Media and Society Seminars, founded by her husband Fred. Starting as a researcher, she moved on to become an editor, producer, and executive producer on more than 100 hours of programming airing nationally on PBS, including The Constitution: That Delicate Balance, Managing Our Miracles: Health Care in America, Ethics in America, and That Delicate Balance II: Our Bill of Rights.
After her husband’s death in 1998, Ruth took over as Director of Media and Society Seminars, and became Vice President and Senior Editorial Director of Fred Friendly Seminars (FFS) a successor organization that took over the production responsibilities. The FFS programs produced for PBS include Minds on the Edge, Ethics in America 2, Our Genes/Our Choices, Who Cares: Chronic Illness in America, Epidemic, and Beyond Black and White: Affirmative Action in America. Over the years, Ruth has also produced more than 300 non-televised seminars for medical, legal, educational, governmental, and civic groups across the country.
Ruth at her desk at the Columbia University School of Journalism in 2009, where at 85 she continued to serve as the Vice President and Editorial Director of Fred Friendly Seminars: award-winning television programs. Photo Credit: Ruth Friendly
In the 2000s, Ruth served for eight years as a Commissioner on the New York State Commission of Nomination, Court of Appeals. She also served as a panel member for the Disciplinary Committee of the Appellate Division, New York Supreme Court. She is an active board member of Riverdale Senior Services and Riverdale Neighborhood House.
Ruth delights in sharing her free time with her six children and their families, including ten amazing grandchildren, and five prized great-grandchildren.
Extended Interview with Ruth Friendly
Exclusive Content From From the First Schoolhouse: A Scarsdale Story
