SAMUEL N. FRIEDMAN

FRIEDMAN--Samuel Nathaniel, 94, grew up in a small apartment on Saratoga Avenue in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and died Monday night at his spacious park-view Central Park West apartment. He went the way he would have wanted to, having dinner with his wife, Barbara Somers, a gourmet cook. Sam, as he was known, had led a full and happy life until a few years ago when he began to have health problems. He was blind and wheelchair-bound at his death. But until the last few years, he was a force of nature for family and friends. Tall, handsome (a striking resemblance to Gregory Peck), a great story teller, a fabulous businessman and salesman, agricultural expert and possessed of exquisite taste. He wore off-the-rack clothing that looked as if it were bespoken. His favorite garment was a loose black shirt designed by friend, Massimo Vignelli. As a youth, Sam was an avid Zionist as was his father, Israel, an immigrant from Cracow and a union leader. Sam's mother Sarah immigrated from Siroka in what is now Moldova. He spent all his teens through the Depression years (he was thirteen at the crash of 1929) and had to work after school throughout his high school years to help support the family. Sam worked his way through Cornell and got a BS, '36, in diary chemistry. During summers, he worked as an apprentice on dairy farms upstate. His father had hopes Sam would go to what was then Palestine as a pioneer. But Sam was a committed American and moved to a then-new cooperative community in central New Jersey called Jersey Homesteads, later Roosevelt, where, with his first wife, Charlotte Safir, he raised three children - Miriam Aliminos, 60; Dinah Lefkowitz, 66; and Joshua Friedman, 69. At the end of WWII, a friend and neighbor, artist Ben Shahn, introduced Sam to Klaus Grabe, a Bauhaus-trained German architect who had fled to Mexico as a political refugee in the 1930's. Sam went to work for Klaus in his furniture business, which -- despite Sam's efforts-did not prosper. But Sam stayed in furniture, working for other firms -- Berge Norman and George Tanier -- and then started his own firm ICF (International Contract Furnishings) in 1962 with a friend from Tanier, Hal Stearns. Aided by furniture designer Pat Hoffman, who became his second wife, Sam built ICF into an iconic design firm. He introduced Americans to classic architect-designed European furniture of the early 20th Century--especially that of Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. ICF introduced to the United States market the work of Josef Hoffmann, Mario Botta, Philippe Starck and Richard Neutra, among others. At its height, ICF was blazing the way for a look that persists in executive suites around the U.S. When Pat Hoffman died of cancer, Sam was heartsick, sold ICF and retired. He spent the rest of his life gardening at his country home in Amagansett, entertaining in his city apartment, then on Park Ave., and traveling with Barbara, who became his third wife. But most of all, he loved doting on his grandchildren and great grandchildren: Miriam and husband Yannis' kids: Angelos, Kiki, Lysistrata, Cassandra; Dinah and Stephen Lefkowitz's kids: Benjamin and Bridget Bly (Nora and Zoe) and Jennifer and Robert Donahue (Cait and Samantha); and Josh and Carol Ash Friedman's daughter, Susannah and her fiance, Gareth Crawford. As if that weren't enough nachas, he also doted on his nieces and nephews, the children of his surviving brother, Abraham Friedman and wife Diana, and the children of his deceased sister Esther Swiller-and their kids' kids. Funeral service, Wednesday, 12:45pm at The Riverside, 331 Amsterdam Ave., at 76th St. Burial for family only will follow at Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, NJ. For Shiva information contact Riverside at 212-362-6600. It was a full and happy life.