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Doris Lund Freeman, 95, died March 29, 2025. Born August 13, 1929, in Plentywood, Montana, Mrs. Freeman grew up in Reserve, a town of fewer than a hundred residents.
She earned a BA in English from the University of Montana and married David D. Freeman in 1950. They immediately drove to Philadelphia so he could enroll at the University of Pennsylvania.
An ROTC officer, he was soon sent to Germany where Doris joined him for a year in Bad Tolz and Nurnberg. Although they intended to return to Montana when he received his graduate degree in architecture at Penn, David was offered a job in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. They moved there in 1957, putting down roots for their three sons as both became involved in that community.
In the 60s, Mrs. Freeman served as president of the local League of Women Voters, budget chair of the LWV of PA, and was a central figure in the starting Wolfsohn Memorial Library, now the Upper Merion Township Library. She worked on voter-registration drives, reform of Pennsylvania's Constitution and was active in local fair-housing efforts.
In the 70s, Mrs. Freeman earned her MS in library science at Villanova University and became the first full-time librarian at Roberts Elementary School. She redesigned library curriculum, serviced as legislative chair of the Pennsylvania School Librarians' Association and reviewed professional books for School Library Media Quarterly.
She served for many years on the Board of the Montgomery County-Norristown Public Library and was elected to Montgomery County's Government Study Committee. Mrs. Freeman represented Upper Merion Area School District in Project 81, working for five years with the Pennsylvania Department of Education to build community involvement in schools and to raise graduation requirements.
In 1982, she became UMASD director of curriculum, coordinating K-12 instruction. Later Mrs. Freeman became the first woman to serve as an administrator in the Upper Merion Area High School; she was principal of the Middle School when she retired in 1993.
Appointed by the Montgomery County Commissioners to their Commission on Women and Families, Mrs. Freeman concentrated on extending public awareness of domestic violence, and for the commission's first dinner, Mrs. Freeman designed the cover of the program.
She inked in a skirt for one of the two male figures in Montgomery County's seal. Thus began the move wherein later commissioners changed the county logo to include a woman officially for the first time. In 1996, Mrs.
Freeman was appointed to the Montgomery Bar Association's Community Outreach Committee and a lay member of the Investigative Division of the Pennsylvania Judical Evaluation Commission. She was the first editor of MBA's Elder Law Handbook in 2000 and that year she received the Honorable Milton O. Moss Public Service Award from the Montgomery Bar Foundation.
She edited the first MBA Criminal Justice Handbook, was secertary of the first Upper Merion Police Citizen Advisory Board, served on the board of the Upper Merion Senior Center and rejoined the township's library board. As a library volunteer, she helped reorganize its local history collection. In 2002 she received Upper Merion's Martin Luther King Jr.
Humanitarian Award. Mrs. Freeman traveled to Mexico, Canada, many parts of Europe and to China in 1998 as a People-To-People Ambassador.
With family members, she visited Australia in 2013. After the death of her husband, Mrs. Freeman moved to Shannondell in Audubon where she helped to organize a current events discussion group, the Ashcroft library, and book collections in the art studio and the bird-carving room.
During the last few years she composed various essays about her life. Two sisters and two brothers passed away before Mrs. Freeman.
She is survived by sons David (Lynne) of Nashville, TN; Bruce (Tracy) of Kalispell, MT; Richard (Diane) of Westerly, RI; sister-in-law Delores Lund of Plentywood, MT; six grandchildren; nine great grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews. Memorial gifts are welcome at Habitat for Humanity of Flathead Valley, 2535 US Hwy 93 South, Kalispell, MT 59901, www.habitatflathead.
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