Martin B. Friend

Martin B. Friend Endowed Scholarship

The Martin B. Friend Endowed Scholarship Fund honors the legacy of the attorney and DePaul Law School graduate Martin B. Friend (JD ’52). The scholarship was created by his family in 2021 upon Friend’s passing, at age 93.
Friend, who was a personal injury lawyer into his 80s, was considered a pillar of the Chicago legal community. A member of the Jewish War Veterans organization, he was active in Jewish causes and institutions such as the United Jewish Appeal as well as Anshe Emet Synagogue (in Lakeview) and Temple Beth-El (in Highland Park). Along with his loving wife of 69 years, Ellen Jane Simons Friend, who predeceased him by four months, he was deeply committed to Women’s American ORT.

Martin Friend was born in Chicago on January 19, 1928, the son of a furniture store owner, Sam, and homemaker, Sadie. After graduating from Chicago’s Senn High School, he joined the Navy and was stationed in Guam for his military service, which began just after the end of World War II. With the help of the G.I. Bill, he was able to attend DePaul University, where he received an undergraduate degree before going on to DePaul Law. He was senior partner at several law firms through the decades, including Friend and Steponate as well as Friend, Levinson & Turner.

Known to everyone as Marty, he was the ultimate optimist, whose wide eyes, bright smile, and gleaming bald pate lit up every room he entered. A consummate family man, he was known for his unflagging sense of humor, generosity, buoyant spirit, and interpersonal dynamism, which manifest itself in his ability to strike up a conversation with any stranger who crossed his path. (Each year, he sent out 5,000 holiday cards to clients, relatives, and friends.)

A social animal with an incredibly wide circle of intimates, he was beloved for his boundless enthusiasm, gregarious manner, and joie de vivre. A tennis player, he established the tennis program at Elm’s Swim and Tennis Club, in Highland Park. A golfer, he was a long-standing member of Bryn Mawr Country Club, in Lincolnwood, and the Country Club at DC Ranch, in Scottsdale, Arizona.

A lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, Marty, as a teenager, attended the 1945 World Series at Wrigley Field. And in 2016, even though his declining mobility forbade him from going to a game that year, he was thrilled to look out the window of his Lake Shore Drive apartment and admire the lights of the ballpark as the Cleveland Indians fell to the Cubs—en route to the Northsiders’ first World Championship since 1908. Upon his passing, Marty was laid to rest in a burial vault with two emblems etched onto its surface: a Jewish star and a Chicago Cubs logo.

—David Friend and Richard Friend, sons of Martin B. Friend