Charlene E. Grayson
1935-2016

Charlene E. Grayson, 80, St. Joseph, Missouri passed away Wednesday, February 10, 2016 at a local healthcare facility.
She was born August 14, 1935 in Lathrop, Missouri.
Charlene worked as a cosmetologist for 40 years and as an assembler for MEADS products before retiring in 2000.
Mrs. Grayson was a member of Hope Fellowship Church.
She was preceded in death by her parents, Tapp and Colene (Finley) Weston; husband, Calvin Grayson; and siblings, Mary Weston, Leon Weston, Glenn Weston, Sr., Archie Weston and Barbara Bell.
Survivors include her daughter, Charrayle Grayson, St. Joseph; and nine siblings, Clara Botts, Seattle, Washington, Ruth Watson (Glen, Sr.), Elwood, Kansas, Doris Nance, Seattle, Washington, Donna Sue Weston, St. Joseph, Oliver Weston, St. Joseph, Floyd Weston, St. Joseph, James Weston (Marjorie), St. Joseph, Larry Weston, St. Joseph and Deborah Weston, St. Joseph.
Farewell Services 10:00 A.M. Saturday, Meierhoffer Funeral Home & Crematory. Interment Memorial Park Cemetery. The family will gather with friends 6:00 to 8:00 P.M. Friday, Meierhoffer Funeral Home & Crematory. Flowers are appreciated and for those wishing to make a contribution, the family requests they be made to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Online guest book and obituary at www.meierhoffer.com.

Joseph Friedman, D.P.M.
1920-2016

Joseph Friedman, D.P.M., 95, St. Joseph, Missouri passed away Friday, February 12, 2016 at a local healthcare facility.
Dr. Friedman was a 1937 graduate of Central High School and a 1939 graduate of St. Joseph Junior College. In 1941, he entered Illinois College of Podiatric Medicine in Chicago. His school was interrupted December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
Friedman entered the Army July 1942, and rose rapidly through the ranks to staff sergeant, giving credit to his high school ROTC training. In June 1943, he entered officer candidate school and upon graduation was commissioned second lieutenant. Friedman was with Patton’s Third Army troops as they liberated the first concentration camp at Ohrdruf, Germany, a satellite of the infamous Buchenwald Camp. After several months in Europe Friedman was promoted to first lieutenant and alter earned a battlefield promotion to captain from Major General William Robertson.
From May 1945 to March 1946, Friedman worked in the Displaced Persons Camps to help repatriate Eastern and Western Europeans who had been slave laborers for the Nazi war machine. For his work in these camps he received six Commendation Letters that led to the Army Commendation Medal. After discharge in 1946, he returned to podiatric college, graduating cum laude in 1949 and practiced in St. Joseph from 1949-1962.
Dr. Friedman was a member of Temple Adath Joseph, Temple B’nai Sholem and past president of B’nai Brith Joseph Lodge #73, Kiwanis, and St. Joseph Community Theater. He had 50-year pins from the Masonic Lodge Scottish Rite and Moila Shrine Temple. Friedman received three keys to the city: from Mayor Stanley Dale in 1954, from Mayor David Polsky in 1983, from Mayor Larry Stobbs in 2000.
From 1952-1962, Friedman’s hobby was appearing in St. Joseph Community Theater plays. In May 1962, he closed his podiatry office and joined a melodrama troupe in Colorado, touring Aspen, Leadville and Breckenridge until the season closed on Labor Day 1962. He then left for NY to pursue a career in theater. He studied at Circle in the Square in Greenwich Village. While at the school he appeared in “Desire under the Elms” with George C. Scott and Colleen Dewhurst. He also studied with NY’s leading voice coach Earl Rogers.
In 1964, he appeared in his first Broadway play “The Deputy”. During this time he met and later married his late wife, Gladys, a native New Yorker. At that time, Dr. Friedman began studying musical comedy with the famed Charles Nelson Reilly. He also began a series of appearances in several soap operas. In order to join the Actor’s Union he was obliged to change his name, thus, Joel Fredrick was born.
In the summer of 1965, he appeared at Elitch’s Summer Stock in Denver, Colorado, with Eve Arden, Hal March, Pierre Aumont, Hermione Gingold, Phil Ford, Mimi Hines and Kitty Carlisle. After returning to NY Dr. Friedman appeared in his second Broadway show “minor Miracle.” Then late Charles Nelson Reilly asked him to appear in “Confetti.” Hal Prince Productions casting director Shirley Rich was in the audience. The next morning she called Dr. Joe and asked him to audition for “Fiddler on the Roof”, which had been running for two years on Broadway. He was put in a touring company of Fiddler, which led to three years and 2840 performances. The company played 34 states and all the provinces of Canada. In 1969, the Fiddler Company opened at the Union Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas where Friedman did two shows a night for four months. While appearing at the Linde Opera House in LA, his wife auditioned and was cast in the role of the innkeeper’s wife. Both were in the show for another year.
There followed summer packages of “Fiddler” with Theodore Bickel and with Jan Pierce. Friedman also played Thomson, Secretary of the Second Continental Congress in the musical “1776”. A five-week tour of “The World of Paddy Chayefsky” produced by Arthur Cantor consisted of three one-acts taken from the “Tenth Man” in which he played a rabbi; “Gideon” in which he played Lord Angel; and “The Passion of Joseph D” in which he played Lenin. There followed in rapid succession three more off-Broadway productions. In 1972, tiring of touring and wanting to do more television and film, Joe and Gladys moved to LA to explore new fields.
For the next 34 years Dr. Friedman appeared “All in the Family,” “Maude,” “Streets of San Francisco” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as an Ed Asner dancer and look-alike. Movies followed: “The Big Fix,” “The Frisco Kid” with Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford, “Won Ton Ton the Dog Who Saved Hollywood,” and “Grease.” TV movies and specials included “Panic on Page One,” a Johnny Cash Christmas show, “Escape from Hell,” “Bob Hope’s Tribute to Vaudeville” with Lucille Ball and Bernadette Peters, “It’s a Fad, Fad, Fad, Fad World” with the late Richard Dawson, and “Androcles and the Lion.’
For 15 years he worked for Goodson-Todman, producers of “Match Game”, “Price is Right”, “Pyramid” and “Family Feud” as a celebrity stand-in. He worked as an actor, writer, and researcher with host Jack Palance on Jack Haley, Jr./Ron Lyon Productions of “Ripley’s Believe It or Not,” which ran for five years. In July, 1983, Palance, Jack Haley, Jr. and film crew along with Friedman came to St. Joseph to film stories on the Pony Express, The Patee House, Jesse James and the first bank west of the Mississippi robbed after the Civil War.
Next came the research and documentation for the 1989 premier of “The Making of a Movie Classic: The Wizard of Oz,” hosted by Angela Lansbury. Shortly after “National Geographic” hired Friedman to do research and documentation for “Secrets of the Titanc” with famed Dr. Robert Ballard who, with his crew, found the Titanic. For this Dr. Friedman received the first Emmy presented in the research category.
In 1991, Joe and Gladys came to St. Joseph to receive the MWSU Distinguished Alumni Award. They moved back to St. Joseph in 1994. Mrs. Friedman succumbed a year later to cancer. After a period of grieving, Dr. Friedman plunged into civic activities, including talks on the Holocaust. These lectures started when the Friedmans were living in LA and a high school teacher in the San Fernando Valley told his students that the Holocaust did not exist. The LA community challenged the instructor. Together with Henry Winkler, the Fonz “Happy Days”, and a Auschwitz survivor, they toured high schools to tell the true story of the Holocaust. Friedman gave an oral history for both the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Steven Spielberg’s Shoah foundation on his experiences working with concentration camp survivors and Displaced Persons.
Dr. Friedman gave many lectures and musical performances in St. Joseph to raise money for local charities. In 1998 he received the Mayor’s Award for Individual Artists. In 2004, Joe received the prestigious Jefferson Award, often referred to as the Nobel Prize for outstanding community and public service to our nation and has been described as a philanthropist and raconteur. Friedman wrote numerous articles for the News-Press, national magazines, and a feature story “A Memory of My Father” for Guideposts magazine later appeared in the book Best Loved Short Stories of 1998.
Dr. Friedman often said he was most proud of how he celebrated his 80th birthday in 2000-at Second Harvest Food Warehouse. Enough was collected to provide 14,500 meals.
Dr. Friedman was very active with Missouri Western State University, where he received the Honorary Doctorate Degree of Humane Letters in 2013. He established two scholarships, and often performed fundraising concerts. An alumni lounge is named in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Joseph Friedman and Joseph J. Droher, Dr. Joe’s cousin who had been orphaned at age 11 and came to live with the Friedman family.
A book about Dr. Joe Friedman’s life has been published and is becoming a “best seller.”
Friedman was preceded in death by his wife; Gladys (Levine) Friedman; parents, David and Esther (Feldman) Friedman; brother, Jack Friedman; sisters, Bess Beck, Lillie Rich and Elaine Fieman; son, Jay Weinstein; and niece, Barbara Friedman Barr.
Joe is survived by daughter-in-law, Janet Weinstein; and grandson, Dr. Zachary Weinstein, both of Forest Hills, NY; and nine nieces and nephews and their spouses: Diane Lee and Bob, Jeff Rich and Nancy, Sheldon Friedman and Ellen, Sherry Tenenbaum and Allen, Karen Levine, Evan Fieman and Peggy, Myles Beck and Iris, and Michael Fieman and family.
Farewell Services 1:00 P.M. Tuesday, Meierhoffer Funeral Home & Crematory. Interment Shaare Sholem Cemetery. The family will gather with friends 5:00 to 7:00 P.M. Monday, Meierhoffer Funeral Home & Crematory. Flowers are appreciated and for those wishing to make a contribution, the family requests they be made to Gladys and Joseph Friedman Music Scholarship. Online guest book and obituary at www.meierhoffer.com.

Connie Frances Brooks
1949-2015

Connie Frances Brooks, 66, St. Joseph, Missouri passed away Saturday, February 13, 2016 at her home.
She was born June 8, 1949 in St. Joseph, Missouri.
Connie was preceded in death by her parents; and four siblings. Survivors include sister, Patricia Weeks; and numerous nieces and nephews.
Natural Farewell under the direction of Meierhoffer Funeral Home & Crematory. Online guest book and obituary at www.meierhoffer.com.

Goldie Belle Rowlett
1919-2016

Goldie Belle Rowlett, age 96, passed away, February 11, 2016 at a local hospital.
She was born near Fortescue, Missouri November 1, 1919.
She married Orville E. Rowlett in 1939.
She was a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She attended the St. Joseph Restoration Branch.
She was preceded in death by her parents; and husband, Orville Edward Rowlett.
Survivors include son, Phillip Rowlett; daughter, Roxanna Fannon; five grandchildren; eight great-grandchildren; and best friend, Christina Holloway.
Farewell Services 1:00 P.M. Monday, Pettijohn & Crawford Family Funeral Service. Interment Mount Hope Cemetery. The family will gather with friends 12:30 P.M. to 1:00 P.M. Monday, Pettijohn & Crawford Family Funeral Service. Online guest book and obituary at www.pettijohncrawford.com.

John Thomas Nurski
John Thomas Nurski 89, of St. Joseph, Missouri passed away February 14, 2016; arrangements are pending at the Rupp Funeral Home.