Rosalind Roseblum Frisch, age 97 years, of Skillman, NJ, died peacefully on Thursday, January 11, 2024, at Stonebridge Care Center, Montgomery Township, NJ. She was in hospice following a recent stroke, having suffered from dementia for more than a decade.

Roz was born on December 25, 1926 in Brooklyn, NY to Gussie Chait and Rubin Roseblum, the second of their two children. She was a first-generation American, the daughter of Russian Jews. Her mother’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Russia when Gussie was a baby. Her father who had a relative in New York, made his way alone across the ocean when he was only 14. According to family lore, his family arranged to have him smuggled out of Russia to protect him from the draft, which was often a death sentence for Jewish boys. In the U.S., he worked in the garment industry. He became a highly talented cutter who was widely admired in the industry and who ultimately ran his own women’s coat making business.

Roz was the first person in her family to attend college, graduating from Brooklyn College in Education Administration and Sociology. While she loved art, her parents encouraged her to get a practical degree, so she became a primary school teacher. In 1949, she married Norman Frisch, a World War II veteran from Brooklyn. They soon moved to Connecticut where she worked as a public school teacher and curriculum developer in Milford. They lived in a Quonset hut while he pursued his PhD in Chemical Engineering at Yale. After he obtained his degree, Norman found employment at a chemical corporation and they bought a starter house in Levittown, Pennsylvania, where their two daughters were born in 1956 and 1961.

When her daughters were young, Roz worked as a teacher and director in a cooperative nursery school. She also helped start the Head Start program in Lower Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she served as the founding director.

In 1967, the Frisch family moved to Princeton NJ, where their son was born in 1970. Later that decade she returned to the workforce as education director at the New Jersey branch of Junior Achievement. She went on to earn a Masters degree in Public Administration from Rider University, where she directed its Executive Leadership Training Program. She was also the principal writer and researcher for the task force on equitable compensation for state employees. She then worked as the interim portfolio administrator at Edison College.

Roz devoted countless hours toward trying to make the world a better place, working locally on issues that she found meaningful. In the 1950s and 60s, Roz was active in the civil rights movement locally. In 1957, after the first Black family bought a home in Levittown, violent mobs burned crosses, vandalized property, and rioted. In her later years, she proudly recalled delivering a basket of vegetables from her garden, while holding her firstborn child in her arms, to the new family as a show of solidarity. For years, she regularly participated in a Bristol, Pennsylvania, interracial group that advocated for fairness in housing in an impoverished community.

Rob continued to participate in community service for as long as she was able. For many years, she volunteered as a municipal mediator through the Mercer County Courts. For two years, she was an ombudsman at the Forrestal Nursing Home. She was involved in the Robeson Group, which advocated for minority students.

In the 1980s, she served a term on the Board of the Princeton Regional Schools. From 1996 though 2009 she served on the New Jersey School Ethics Commission, a position appointed by the governor.

Roz is survived by her children, Tracy Frisch of Argyle, NY; Lauren Frisch of Ithaca and her son-in-law Alan Bleier; and Evan Frisch of Seattle; her grandchildren Dylan Bleier, Julia Bleier, and Jen Frisch-Wang. She was predeceased by her brother Jack and her ex-husband Norman.

Graveside life celebration services and burial in the natural burial ground at Rosemont Cemetery, Rosemont, NJ, will take place on Thursday, January 18, 2024, at 11:00 a.m., under the care and direction of Wright & Ford Family Funeral Home and Cremation Services, 38 State Highway 31, Flemington, NJ. Everyone is kindly asked to meet at the cemetery beginning at 10:45 a.m. and to follow the instructions of the Wright & Ford Care Team Family Ambassadors upon arrival.

You are encouraged to visit Rosalind’s permanent life celebration site at www.wrightfamily.com to light a candle of hope, leave messages of condolence, share words of comfort and recollection, and post photographs of her life.

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Wright & Ford, your local, family owned & operated “Life Celebration Home”

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