Lida Freeman, former business owner and Penn professor, has died at 94

Lida Freeman, 94, of Haverford, former owner and president of H. Freeman and Son Clothing, retired professor of Romance Philology at the University of Pennsylvania, and the first woman to serve on the Wharton School’s Board of Overseers, died Monday, Dec. 4, of a heart attack at her home.

Dr. Freeman was born in Plzen when the Czech Republic was Czechoslovakia, and her family moved several times as war enveloped Europe in the 1940s. She came to Philadelphia in 1948 when she was 19, learned English, and eventually earned a doctorate at Penn in the Romance languages.

Adept at speech, interpretation, and instruction, she spoke eight languages and taught classes at Penn in the 1960s. She married Benjamin H. Freeman in the 1950s, became president of his Philadelphia high-end men’s clothing company in 1971, and was owner for a decade after he died in 1973.

Dr. Freeman sold the firm in 1983 but continued to connect with civic, academic, and philanthropic leaders by working with Penn president emeritus Martin Myerson in the 1980s and ‘90s, and as a trustee and board member for Penn, Episcopal Academy, and other organizations. With Myerson, she served on the selection committee for the Philadelphia Foundation’s annual Liberty Medal, as budget administrator for the University of Pennsylvania Foundation, and in other roles with the institutes, centers, libraries, and trusts with which he was affiliated.

As owner, president, and board chairman of H. Freeman and Son, Dr. Freeman ran the manufacturing firm at 33rd and Arch Streets almost single-handedly for a decade. The company, founded in 1885 by her first husband’s father, employed 800 people in the early 1970s and had a second location in Norristown. It was known in the 1950s and ‘60s for providing suits to Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon.

She had little previous business experience but still established financial goals and marketing practices for the company. She oversaw quality control and handled labor relations with the union.

She responded to an industry slowdown in the mid-1970s by introducing new fabrics to the line and attracting a big-name designer. She resisted raising prices or reducing quality to save money during the slump because “there would be no reason for the existence of H. Freeman and Son,” she told The Inquirer in 1979. “That is what we’re known for.”

She even managed to convince 200 union workers to accept a pay cut in 1979 to help the company rebound.

After she became the first woman to serve on the Wharton School’s Board of Overseers in 1975, Dr. Freeman taught a course at Wharton in the 1980s. She was a trustee for the Craig-Dalsimer Division of Adolescent Medicine at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and active with the Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia.

She also sat on city government panels and interacted with a variety of academies, associations, and societies. She was invited to many charity balls and social galas, and she appeared often in The Inquirer’s business and society pages in the 1970s and ‘80s. She retired in the mid-1990s.

“She was hands-on with everything she did,” said her son, John. “The company was basically her.”

Ludmila Cermak was born Aug. 14, 1929. She preferred to be called Lida and studied at Charles University in Prague, and later in the United States before attending Penn.

She married Benjamin Freeman, and they had son John, and lived in Narberth. She married Don Brennan in 1977 after the death of her first husband. They divorced later, and he died earlier.

Dr. Freeman liked to ski, play tennis, and read. She was “conservative and proper,” her son said. She lived later in Radnor, Rosemont and Haverford.

“I knew I came first with her,” her son said. “Everything she did was for the best for me.”

In addition to her son, Dr. Freeman is survived by other relatives.

A celebration of her life is to be held later.