Thomas Friedman - Biography

Biography

Thomas Friedman was born in St. Louis Park, Minnesota — a suburb of Minneapolis — on July 20, 1953. He is the son of Harold and Margaret Friedman. Harold Friedman, who was vice president of a ball-bearing company, United Bearing, died of a heart attack in 1973, when Tom was nineteen years old. Margaret Friedman, who served in the U.S. Navy in World War II and studied home economics at the University of Wisconsin, was a housewife and a part-time bookkeeper. She also was a Senior Life Master duplicate bridge player and died in 2008. Friedman has two older sisters, Shelly and Jane.

From an early age, Friedman, whose father often brought him to the golf course for a round after work, wanted to be a professional golfer. He played a lot of sports, becoming serious about tennis and golf. He caddied at a local country club; in 1970 he caddied for the legendary Chi Chi Rodriguez when the US Open came to town.

Friedman is Jewish. He attended Hebrew school five days a week until his Bar Mitzvah, then St. Louis Park High School where he wrote articles for his school's newspaper. He became enamored of Israel after a visit there in December 1968, and he spent all three of his high school summers living on Kibbutz Hahotrim, near Haifa. He has characterized his high school years as "one big celebration of Israel's victory in the Six-Day War."

Friedman studied at the University of Minnesota for two years, but later transferred to Brandeis University and graduated summa cum laude in 1975 with a degree in Mediterranean studies. While at Brandeis he roomed with psychologist, Steven Fox. Friedman taught a class in economics at his alma mater Brandeis University in 2006, and was a commencement speaker at Brandeis in 2007.

After Brandeis he attended St Antony's College at the University of Oxford on a Marshall scholarship, earning an M.Phil. in Middle Eastern studies. He names Professor Albert Hourani among his important academic influences.

Friedman's wife, Ann, is a graduate of Stanford University and the London School of Economics. They were married in London on Thanksgiving Day 1978. Her father, Matthew Bucksbaum, was the chairman of the board of General Growth Properties, a real estate development group. As of 2007, Forbes estimated the Bucksbaum family's assets at $4.1 billion, including about 18.6 million square meters of mall space, but the firm's value later plummeted. The family's trust declined in value from $3.6 billion to $25 million. On April 16, 2009, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, after failing to reach a deal with its creditors. The GGP collapse marked the largest real estate bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Ann and Thomas Friedman live in Bethesda, Maryland. The couple has two daughters, Orly (b. 1985) and Natalie (b. 1988).